Bound Feet and Western Dress

Bound Feet and Western Dress

Women -- China -- Social conditions. Feminists -- China -- Biography. Chinese Americans -- Biography. China -- Social life and customs

As a first-generation Chinese-American dutifully majoring in Chinese studies, Pang-Mei Natasha Chang stumbled across the name of her great-aunt Chang Yu-i in a history book. To Pang-Mei's astonishment, her eighty-three-year-old aunt, best known in the family for her retiring ways and masculine manner, had once been married to Hsu Chih-mo, China's preeminent modern poet, had run the Shanghai Women's Savings Bank during the 1930s, and had suffered the anguish of enduring what is considered China's first Western-style divorce. Could this same woman, whom Pang-Mei regarded as part respected elder and part unsophisticated immigrant, be the same romantic heroine from her textbooks? Over the next few years, Pang-Mei spent long afternoons with Yu-i drawing forth her story - an unforgettable saga of a woman, born in Shanghai at the turn of the century to a highly respected, well-to-do family, who continually defied the expectations of her class and culture.

Chang, Pang-Mei Natasha

Doubleday

1996

HQ1767 .C434

2003.500.1340