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"When I was in Xia Village"

* Louise Edwards, "Women Sex-spies: Chastity, National Dignity, Legitimate Gov and DL's "When..." in China Quarterly

* Espionage and counter-espionage --central to the war effort

; women --regularly involved in all aspects of intelligence work

; In China, the KMT and the CCP -- extensive underground networks of agents and informers throughout the wars against J and each other.

* Women featured frequently in espionage roles for both parties

; deployed a range of info-gathering techs, including dispensing sexual favors.

* In the popular consciousness women espionage agents --commonly assumed to use sex as the prime mechanism for their intelligence work.

* extreme sacrifice of the protagonist

(1) the depth of ZZ's dedication to the Party's anti-J cause

(2) the limits of the Party's compassion for its agent's physical health and safety.

(1) repugnance that women sex spies invoke among the people they serve

(2) grudging admiration they garner for the extent of their sacrifice

==> a grimly realistic vision of the emotional and physical costs for a spy perfoming sexual service for the CCP in 1940s China

* horror of her experience in J hands -- mitigated by her participation in the CCP's espionage work.

; she describes how her fear of J soldiers diminished once she "made contact with other people (the communist forces)."

; while away from Xia, learned J and engaged in three important missions for the Communists

; back into the heart of enemy territory with a clear sense of personal agency

; Zhenzhen -> the narrator about her plan

; go to Yan'an to start a new life free from illiteracy and the gossip of the village

* The Party used ZZ's sexuality

; now help in rehabilitating her physically, psychologically, and intellectually

* a story of a female spy of the Second S-J War

* 17-year-old Zhenzhen (meaning!) -- abducted from Xia village by the invading Japanese

; a year later-- revealed that raped, forced into sexual servitude, "married" to a J officer and become riddled with venereal disease.

* Xia village - Zhenzhen w/ horror, disdain, awe, and sympathy

* Responses --(1)she is a disgrace for returning home in her despoiled state

(2) pity her fate and respect her resilience and courage

* Zhenzhen - seeks neither their sympathy nor appears to care about their disdain

; managing illness with plans for the future and faith in the imminent cure for her diseased body.

* For national govs, the difficulty lies in asserting the moral legitimacy of their rule in the face of evidence about their deployment of women as sex spies.

* For national populations, the diff - in the desire to construct reassuring victory stories within the peacetime normalcy.

* the longstanding tradition wherein China's imperial ruler asserted their good governance skills through the promotion of a secure sexual order

*Despite the many challenges made to "feudal" values during the May Fourth and Socialist years, female chastity remains a powerful legitimizing currency for national leaders and their populations

* Such women struggled to overturn this misconception about the nature of their contribution; seeking to be recognized as professionals

* debates over "our" use of women as sex spies

; Wu Qun - the use of women unproblematic

b/c once peace is restored national, social and moral borders need to be reaffirmed

* The incorporation of women spies in a history of a glorious and upright national struggle -- difficult given the high moral value placed on women's sexual loyalty in the Chinese soc

political tragedies

* In early 1931, DL's husband and four other young league writers - captured and executed by the KMT.

* DL - kidnapped and put under house arrest in 1933.

* In 1936, she escaped from her imprisonment in Nanjing and arrived in Yan'an ( where the CCP was based) ; her writing career took another turn.

* She taught Chinese literature at the Red Army Academy

; responsible for political training

* Despite her efforts to conform to party ideology, she chose not to remain silent about the C treatment of women in the revolutionary base.

; Two stories published in 1941; "When I was.." & "In the Hospital"

; dark side of the revolutionary experience

; raising the question of women's position within the revolutionary community

Ding Ling (1904-86)

* a feminist and revolutionary

* Western feminism - self-indulgent

; the best interest of women (as of all people) lies in socialism, not in liberal individualism

* from the declining gentry class in the countryside

;escaped her hometown in defiance of an arranged marriage

; raised by an unconventional mother-- degree in education; made a living by teaching at newly reformed schools (extremely rare for a gentry-class widow at that time)

* In 1920s Shanghai; uprooted people remained anonymous and no need to rely on clan networks

; her life as a "modern girl"

; In 1921, attended a women's college founded by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao

; In 1922, enrolled in Chinese Lit Dept at Shanghai U (known as a gathering place for left-wing intellectuals)

; first short story "Mengke" (my heart) in 1927 and her second story "Miss Sophie's Diary" (female erotic desire)

; Mao Dun "representative of the contradictory psychology regarding sexual love found in young women liberated since May Fourth"

* At the beginning of the 1930s, D.L.'s writing --shift from expressing the subjective life of her characters toward portraying their social milieu.

; transition - two stories , "Weihu" (1930) & "Shanghai, Spring 1930"

; brings together the two themes--the personal and the social--through the "love and revolution" formula so popular at that time among young leftist writers in Shanghai.

; the 1930s ->, Chinese writers from portraying the lonely individual to depicting society at large, from personal psychological exploration to a broad social and political issues.

; D.L - one of the most influential left-wing authors of the 1930s and worked as editor-in-chief of Big Dipper, a bulletin of the League of Left-Wing Writers

Ding Ling, When I was in Xia Village

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