Papers by Yingying Huang
CLEAR: Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, 2021
This paper studies the relationship between nüxia 女俠, or female knight-errant, and footbinding in... more This paper studies the relationship between nüxia 女俠, or female knight-errant, and footbinding in Chinese fiction and argues that footbinding offers a crucial lens for examining the nüxia as a paradoxical construct juxtaposing women’s strength and weakness, freedom and restraints. These contrasts surface with the nüxia’s image in fiction since the Ming and her remodeled personae in the last decade of the Qing, and cast new light on our understanding of her modern-time variations even when footbinding is no longer mentioned.
In nineteenth-century wuxia or xiayi 俠義 (chivalric) fiction, the nüxia’s delicate body stands at odds with her physical prowess and capability of violence, which are essential for her survival in the dangerous “rivers and lakes” (jianghu 江湖), the symbolic territory of knight-errantry. But on the revolutionary scene at the turn of the century, her identification with the xia tradition associated with a bygone age disagrees with her progressiveness, which is usually marked by her unbinding. Tension arises, therefore, between the nüxia’s physical strength and delicacy, between her unconventional deeds and traditional duties, and between the times’ changing perceptions of women.
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Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 2020
John Fryer’s 1895 Chinese fiction contest on the topic of China’s evil practices has been studied... more John Fryer’s 1895 Chinese fiction contest on the topic of China’s evil practices has been studied for its value as historical data and possible impact on the development of modern Chinese fiction. This article treats the contest as an example of how late Qing writers’ introspective gaze was affected by the foreign observer, and uses one of the “evils,” footbinding, to investigate modern Chinese identity formation in an international context. In portraying footbinding as an evil with an awareness of the other looking from the outside in, the competitors set the bound foot in motion: they imagine its reshaping mobilized through the travel of women—as visual objects and as agents to stimulate reform—from the inside out. In doing so these writers hold dialogues not only with the reform discourse that emphasized exposure, vision, and shame, but also with modern literature’s conception of a new Chinese identity through the transformation of women.
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Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 2018
This essay investigates the fantasy of a world expo held in the future Shanghai that appears in t... more This essay investigates the fantasy of a world expo held in the future Shanghai that appears in three late Qing fictional narratives: Liang Qichao’s The Future of New China (1902-1903), Wu Jianren’s New Story of the Stone (1908), and Lu Shi’e’s New China (1910), to understand their time-space construction in fuller dimensions. Contentious popular and scholarly discussions position time as deficient, but this essay asserts that these futurist narratives are not just about time, but about space—in particular, the visual representation of issues regarding the Chinese territory and the international power distribution therein. It argues that territorial deprivation and shame fueled the desire to be strong in the foreigner’s eye, i.e. a transnational vision, which compels the expo fantasies to unfold in an expositional space. This vision inspires images of expansion, power relocation, and exhibition before an international audience, despite or because of the dilemma of time.
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Book Reviews by Yingying Huang
MCLC Resource Center Publication, 2021
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Chinese Literature Today, 2018
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Chinese Literature Today, 2018
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Chinese Literature Today, 2019
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Papers by Yingying Huang
In nineteenth-century wuxia or xiayi 俠義 (chivalric) fiction, the nüxia’s delicate body stands at odds with her physical prowess and capability of violence, which are essential for her survival in the dangerous “rivers and lakes” (jianghu 江湖), the symbolic territory of knight-errantry. But on the revolutionary scene at the turn of the century, her identification with the xia tradition associated with a bygone age disagrees with her progressiveness, which is usually marked by her unbinding. Tension arises, therefore, between the nüxia’s physical strength and delicacy, between her unconventional deeds and traditional duties, and between the times’ changing perceptions of women.
Book Reviews by Yingying Huang
In nineteenth-century wuxia or xiayi 俠義 (chivalric) fiction, the nüxia’s delicate body stands at odds with her physical prowess and capability of violence, which are essential for her survival in the dangerous “rivers and lakes” (jianghu 江湖), the symbolic territory of knight-errantry. But on the revolutionary scene at the turn of the century, her identification with the xia tradition associated with a bygone age disagrees with her progressiveness, which is usually marked by her unbinding. Tension arises, therefore, between the nüxia’s physical strength and delicacy, between her unconventional deeds and traditional duties, and between the times’ changing perceptions of women.