Qiu Jin

Qiu Jin

Qiū Jǐn (秋瑾) Courtesy names: Xuánqīng (璿卿) and Jìngxióng (競雄) Sobriquet: The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake (鑑湖女俠 Jiànhú Nǚxiá) (November 8, 1875 - July 15, 1907) was a Chinese anti-Qing Empire revolutionary, feminist and writer. She was executed after a failed uprising and today is considered a heroine in China.

Biography

Born in Xiamen, Fujian Province, Qiu grew up in her ancestral home, Shānyīn Village, Shaoxing Subprefecture, Zhejiang Province. Married, Qiu found herself in contact with new ideas. In 1904 she decided to travel overseas and study in Japan, leaving her two children behind. She was fond of martial arts, and known by her acquaintances for wearing Western male dress and for her left-wing ideology. She joined the Triads, who at the time advocated the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and return of Chinese government to the Chinese people. She joined the anti-Qing societies Guangfuhui, led by Cai Yuanpei, and the Tokyo-based Tongmenghui led by Sun Yat-sen. She returned to China in 1905.

After returning to China, Qiu Jin started publishing a women's magazine in which she encouraged women to gain financial independence through education and training in various professions. She encouraged women to resist oppression by their families and by the government. At the time it was still customary for women in China to have their feet bound at the age of five. The result of this practice was that the feet were small but crippled. Women's freedom of movement was severely restricted and left them dependent on other people. Such helpless women were, however, more desired as wives, so their families continued the practice to protect their daughters' future security.

Qiu Jin felt that a better future for women lay under a Western-type government instead of the Manchu government that was in power at the time. She joined forces with her cousin Xu Xilin and together they worked to unite many secret revolutionary societies to work together for the overthrow of the Manchu government.

She was an eloquent orator who spoke out for women's rights, such as the freedom to marry, freedom of education, and abolishment of bound feet. In 1906 she founded a radical women's journal with another female poet, Xu Zihua, in Shanghai. In 1907 she became head of the Datong school in Shaoxing, ostensibly a school for sport teachers, but really intended for the military training of revolutionaries.

On July 6, 1907 Xu Xilin was caught by the authorities before a scheduled uprising. He confessed his involvement under interrogation and was executed. Immediately after, on July 12, the government troops arrested Qiu Jin at the school for girls where she was a principal. She was tortured but refused to admit her involvement in the plot, but they found incriminating documents and a few days later she was publicly beheaded in her home village, Shānyīn, at the age of 31.. Qiu Jin was acknowledged immediately by the revolutionaries as a heroine and martyr, and she became a symbol of women's independence in China.

Qiu was immortalized in Republican China's popular consciousness and literature after her death. She is now buried beside West Lake in Hangzhou. The People's Republic of China established a museum for her in Shaoxing City.

Literary works

While Qiu is mainly remembered in the West as revolutionary and feminist, one aspect of her life that gets overlooked is her poetry and essays. Having received an exceptional education in classical literature, reflected in her writing of more traditional poetry (shi and ci) Qiu composed verse with a wide range of metaphors and allusions; mixing classical mythology along with revolutionary rhetoric.

For example, in a poem Ayscough translates as, "Capping Rhymes with Sir Shih Ching From Sun's Root Land" (147) we read the following:

秋瑾〈日人石井君索和即用原韻〉
漫云女子不英雄，萬里乘風獨向東。
詩思一帆海空闊，夢魂三島月玲瓏。
銅駝已陷悲回首，汗馬終慚未有功。
如許傷心家國恨，那堪客裡度春風。
Don't tell me women
are not the stuff of heroes,
I alone rode over the East Sea's
winds for ten thousand leagues.
My poetic thoughts ever expand,
like a sail between ocean and heaven.
I dreamed of your three islands,
all gems, all dazzling with moonlight.
I grieve to think of the bronze camels,
guardians of China, lost in thorns.
Ashamed, I have done nothing;
not one victory to my name.
I simply make my war horse sweat.
Grieving over my native land
hurts my heart. So tell me;
how can I spend these days here?
A guest enjoying your spring winds?

(translated by Zachary Jean Chartkoff)

Editors Sun Chang and Saussy (642)explain the metaphors as follows: line 4: "Your islands" translates "sandao," literally "three islands," referring to Honshū, Shikoku and Kyushu, while omitting Hokkaido - an old fashion way of referring to Japan. line 6: ... the conditions of the bronze camels, symbolic guardians placed before the imperial palace, is traditionally considered to reflect the state of health of the ruling dynasty. But in Qiu's poetry, it reflects instead the state of health of China …

Gallery

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  Statue of Qiu Jin beside West Lake in Hangzhou

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  Statue of Qiu Jin

See also

Poetry portal

• Feminism in China

References

• Ayscough, Florence. Chinese Women: yesterday & to-day. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. (1937)
• Sun Chang, Kang-i and Haun Saussy (eds) Women writers of traditional China: an anthology of poetry and criticism. Charles Kwong, associate editor; Anthony C. Yu and Yu-kung Kao, consulting editors. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. (1999)

External links

• The Qiu Jin Museum
• Autumn Gem - Qiu Jin documentary film

Persondata
Name	Qiu, Jin
Alternative names
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Date of birth	November 8, 1875
Place of birth
Date of death	July 15, 1907
Place of death