Modern Chinese Women’s Sports With A Gender Perspective(1843-1937)

In modern China, a violent conflict between Eastern and Western civilization had led to cultural fracture. Under the background of rapid social change, modern women’s sports began to sprout. And therefore Chinese women’s sports usually presented the sudden historical events under the oppression of national crisises, and were not the results of normal cultural exchanges. Femal’s gender and body in this sports and cultural event had been inevitably painted with distinctive distinctive colors of times and had been branded with deep marks of social ideological trends.Naturally, the original girls’sports in church schools led to the widespread resistance from Chinese people, however, women’s shaded, non-autogenous and western-style sports and entertainments had emerged. Due to modern women’s curiosity and excitement while facing the "wonderful" world outside their homes, these western-style sports were gaining popularity and and arousing their strong desire to try. It was noteworthy that the first-period in western-style sports were neither those boudoir women, nor those educated women, but those prostitutes and maids of the lower classes. They silently stepped into the historical time river. And then women’s sports could start in modern China. Such a historic start wasn’t as vigorous as imagined. As Mr. Tang Zhenchang said that the material aspects of western modernity were accecpted more easily than its "spiritual" dimension by Chinese people. Mr. Li Oufan also said that initially, modernity was often reflected on the material level, and the gradual accumulation of the number led to a qualitative change. Therefore, we find reasons to believe that invisible waves under quiet water were preparing a tidal.During late Qing dynasty and early years of republic of China, most of modern sports had emerged and had almost fixed, which meaned that they hadn’t met Chinese women according to chronological order or the level of intensity, and there was a possibility that they had been introduced to China at the same time. That was a truth. Only in public areas of Shanghai Concession, the westerners had carried out many kinds of sports such as dancing, jockey, bicycle race, boating, tug of war, gymnastics, kickball and circus etc. Certainly each kind of western-style sports had a different fate while meeting Chinese women, which meaned the results of the strong’s cultural colonization and the weak’s self-defense and self-help. The former Should include girls’ sports in church schools. and sporadic private and voluntary physical activity, the latter should include the gymnastics courses of Chinese female schools. It was regretful that for a long time, limited to some bias and the lack and loss of relative references, the mainstream narrative the voluntary spontaneous physical activity of women was not only rejected by the mainstream narrative,but also was overlooked by modern researchers.During the earlier period, there was no formal physical education in girls’ church schools. To cater for the needs of chinese parents, church schools attached more importance to music course and they tried to attract and expand students. Formal physical education was closely related to China’s reform. Then the introduction of competitive sports had been directly affected by ideological trend of chinese women’s liberation. Church schools always wanted to go before chinese people. But later with the wakening and gradually developing self-awareness of Chinese women, Chinese female school rather than church girls school lead fashion trend when the competitive sports began to develop.The imaginative construction of the ideal modern women in the public space newspapers and magazines can be traced back to Wu Youru’s beauty portraits.The women’s pictures represented by "bright eyes and white arms " could be viewed as the ideal women in the eyes of the traditional literary citizen intellectuals. The women were both traditional and modern, both virtuous and romantic and smart. They began their western-style sports and entertainments in a symbolized family environment. Similar to traditional erotic figure, the late Qing courtesan prostitute postcards and courtesan newspapers, the western billiards as same as women’s jade bracelets on the wrists and the jade pendant lobes, were guiding readers to imagine the sexuality and attraction of women’s bodies. Although there were all women on the potraits, a potential male viewer had been omitted. It predicted that at the beginning women’s sports had fallen into the "gaze" of histoty (Michel Foucault). Pergaps this was just the fate of modern women’s sports.Because women’s spontaneous sports practice only maintained the pure purposes of health and entertainment, it had been a women’s "private plots." However, in the context of national crisis, it was very difficult for women’s spontaneous sports practice to obtain historical significance. Only while combining it with the interests of nation-state, it was possible to obtain a legal status and an opportunity to speak.The narrative of mainstream women’s sports (basing on school sports) completely came from the imagination of elite intellectuals on the nation-state.They thought that women’s poverty and weakness(bound feet and no education) caused China’s weak race and the decline of national power. In the vision of the theory of evolution that Chinese people strongly believe in "natural selection and survival of the fittest",only to re-construct and strengthen mothers’bodies could activate the productivity of the nation-state. Therefore, both the evolution of race and the increase of national power were dependent on women’s sports. Due to that, the social responsibility of "strengthening state and protecting race " of women’s sports had gained consistent social realization. Therefore, modern women were given new roles, identities and responsibilities so that they were incorporated into the imaginative construction system on nation-state. As national resources rather than traditional family resources, women were used randomly. However,the difference from men’s sports is that women’s sports were used to train female body based on the gender division of labor. The women in sports entered the narrative of body respectively as citizen’s mother, female citizen and heroine. These three roles showed that national discourse had strongly penetrated into women’s sports activities. From this, the modern women’s sports arised from the urgent need to establish nation-state. When the old gender relations had not been fully eliminated, especially the gender groups, economic status, political status of women,and the new gender relations had not been yet clear, not only all the demands of national interest would have been pushed along in front of women, but also intensification of national crisis would have maken women have no choice, as a result, women would have had to sacrifice their own interests and to obey the nation-state plan. Moreover, women also destined to be manipulated by the country with a strong patriarchal color and gender politics. Therefore, any role of women designed under the framework of nation-state could not have led to true emancipation of women.With the wakening of women and improvement in the level of education, in this movement of physical transformation of body the women were never entirely passive, empowering women through sport could challenge almost all traditional taboos and sports as men without scruple, even break masculinity, femininity decidedly divided. They were the power of the most dynamic in a new round of the role of gender relations. Women in sports through the "out of bounds"behavior constantly adjusted and changed the traditional gender relations,while reacting in the Inherent gender constructed on the nation-state.Therefore, the state would undoubtedly become the major promoter of the new round of gender relations.The gender politics and anti-gender politics of new gender relations become another important structural factor. However, due to the gap between ideology and everyday practice,coupled with the political parties,the personal preferences of government official and various factors such as class, the movement we see today will greatly beyond our imagination.Women in sports is bound to involve women’s body image. Through the essay findings of an "ideal lover essay concluded of "Women’s issue" in1933, we can see how the fit is associated with the construction of nation-states and with the "modern" in nature and away from the traditional. The new female bodybuilding imagination quickly affected by a few elite intellectuals to the readers of the popular imagination because the provision of public space magazine. Those of proven popular new female imagination is how to become reality.Since the state, society and business, gender, political force manipulation, women’s sports is not only limited to health, a line with "national home" buns image of female beauty ideal body finally beating back a variety of modern, unshakable become the standard of modern female figure, occupied the center of media and consumer space and dominated the popular. Thus, bodybuilding eventually evolved into a shape the body’s movement through the campaign.Foucault as well as one of the most prominent feminists, Judith Butler thought"Body and sex are both constructed by culture." Research on modern women’s sports as the "Other" identity have led us to get a similar conclusion.