Cai "Danny": in Why is the phenomenon of infanticide"Chinese"

Su Shi said in a letter to a friend that he cannot abandon the vulgar custom ofinfanticide. According to him, "the villain in the field betweenYueye and Hubei has only two men and one woman. After that, they must bekilled, especially their adoptive daughter, so there are many folk girls andwidowers." As for He recorded the infant killing process: "A man wassoaked in cold water when he was born. His parents couldn't bear it. They oftenclosed their eyes and put their hands in a basin of water. After a long time,they died." In response He said he "cannot eat because of sourtaste." ("Book with Zhu Ezhou")

Su Shi's letter became the starting point of the book "Between Life andDeath: Chinese Women's Infancy in the Nineteenth Century". The bookwas published by Stanford University Press in 2014. Michel King iscurrently an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolinaat Chapel Hill. Her doctoral dissertation explored infanticide in China atthe end of the 19th century from the perspective of cultural history(University of California, Berkeley, 2007). There are many similar recordsin history. These words are the focus of this book's research: the change inthe concept of infanticide in Chinese history, not infanticide itself.

Although the book addresses the serious problem of killing baby girls inhistory, it is not meant to express sadness and condemnation. There aretwo considerations behind this emphasis. First, judging from the researchmaterials, a considerable number of infanticide cases have been recorded indetail and relate to the true situation of history. However, the preservedsecond-hand evidence written by males is quite rich, mainly revealing attitudesand ideas about infanticide. Second, the study of conceptual changes helpsto avoid the persecution of women by traditional culture since ancient times,and proposes historical changes that may exist but are ignored byothers. Related to the second level of consideration is the unsatisfactoryaspect of previous infanticide research: On the one hand, the starting point ofcommon problems (such as "Why are girls the main victims of infanticide?Why is infanticide so common in China? ") Often lead to studies thatattack the Confucian gender order; on the other hand, although data andconclusions provided by population studies show the impact of infanticide oncontrolling family size, in the absence of a specific background, thisinevitably gives people a sense of The distorted impression is that the parentsof ancient China had a heart of stone and ignored their children'slives. In fact, compared with the situation in Europe, we can see thatmany countries in the world have social problems in which parents do not wanttheir own flesh and blood.

Therefore, this book proposes another direction of thinking: when and by whatmethods have killed girls become so Chinese? ("When and how did thekilling of a baby girl become so Chinese?" The author believes that thekilling of a baby girl was labeled China in the late 19th century, when thepractice changed from a local, moral, and charitable Has become a global issuethat is cross-cultural, political, and scientific. It is the emergence ofinfant killing in the West that has shaped the rest of the world's impressionof China. By the early 20th century, even the Chinese felt that killing Babiesare an obvious Chinese problem, so reformers recommend eradicating thedisadvantages of infanticide to improve the composition and number of theChinese population. Through contact with Western cultures, people havegradually realized the significance of baby girls to a country. This

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The main body of the book is divided into five chapters, which tell the storiesof different groups related to the fate of baby girls. The first chapter,"Determining the fate of children: women and childbirth", focuses onwomen involved in the infanticide process, including mothers, midwives,mother-in-law The author focuses on the analysis of a woman named Ye(1567-1659), who recounts her daughter's drowning years before her birth. It isworth mentioning that according to this Analyze that infanticide is not anact that should be condemned or sympathized afterwards, but a decision thatshould be made afterwards. Mothers often end their daughter's life in a complexand difficult environment. In their view, having a boy means that it ispossible in the future Live a comfortable life and earn respect at home. Adaughter who has a child may suffer like her in the future. In addition, thedecision to kill a baby girl may not be a personal idea of