Women, Gender, and Sexuality in China: A Brief History.

• Author: Kinney, Anne Behnke

Women, Gender, and Sexuality in China: A Brief History. By PING YAO. London: ROUTLEDGE, 2022. Pp. x + 201. $136 (cloth); $37 (paper).

Ping Yao's Women, Gender, and Sexuality in China: A Brief History will be greatly welcomed by those teaching courses on women and gender at the university level. The book includes six chapters that cover the various gender roles that women and men assumed in China across a lifetime; ideas about the physical body, sex and the medical arts; and a survey of work, everyday life, religion, and education. A seventh chapter is entitled "Five Women to Remember," which recounts the lives of important women from the Shang, Han, Tang, Ming, and Qing dynasties. The book also includes seven black-and-white images, including, for example, an eighth-century self portrait painted by a woman during the Tang dynasty. Each chapter includes a brief essay followed by a set of primary sources that illustrate the main points of the chapter, as well as a set of questions that can be used as prompts for writing assignments or to generate class discussion. Chapters conclude with a bibliography, as well as suggestions for further reading. Yao also provides a glossary of Chinese characters in traditional form for names, places, and special terminology.

Chapter 1, which covers the topic of life courses and gender roles, begins with a brief discussion of the concept of yin and yang, followed by four primary sources derived from inscriptions, epitaphs, and prose pieces that describe the life-trajectory of one man and two women, as well as one short account from a tenth-century BCE bronze inscription that describes a man's deceased mother. Yao is careful to emphasize that the trajectory of the gender roles differs in accordance with the specific place and time under examination.

Chapter 2 is organized around the theme of marriage and family. As in the other chapters, Yao opens with an engaging passage from a primary source that encapsulates the issues explored in each section and then poses leading questions that apply to the other readings in the chapter. The chapter does a good job of laying out the great diversity of marriage practices in China.

Chapter 3, "Sex, Body, and Medicine," covers a large array of topics: concepts of femininity and masculinity, homosexuality, courtesans, medical views of gender and sexuality, pregnancy and childbirth. The primary sources included in the chapter focus on erotica, homosexual love, fertility...