Overview

At the cutting edge of the growing field of the history of childhood, this book shows how placing children at the centre of historical analysis enables the past to be viewed in new ways. Demonstrating that changes in the way Chinese children were viewed and cared for emerged in the context of an international shift towards child-centred education, the book places Chinese childhood in a global context. It discusses how the state and the family interacted through policy, education, media and regime change, and highlights the centrality of science and technology to twentieth-century Chinese approaches to childhood. In addition, by seeking out the voices of children themselves, the book presents valuable testimony of the world viewed through young eyes. As a study of how class, gender and age affected both representations of children and childhood and children’s real-life experiences, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Chinese studies, modern Chinese history and Childhood studies.

Full Product Details

Author:   Isabella Jackson ,  Yushu Geng
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.670kg
ISBN:  

9781032343860

ISBN 10:   1032343869
Pages:   262
Publication Date:   28 November 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Rethinking Childhood in Modern Chinese History Part 1: Chinese childhood in a global context 2. The Road to Adaptation: The Boy Scout Movement and the Making of Youth Culture in Shanghai, 1912–1919 3. Black Hair, Black Eyes: The Child as Universal Subject in Civil War China, 1946-1949 Part 2: Children in the family and the state 4. National Necessity or Privileged Commodity: Chinese Childcare Centres of the Nanjing Decade, 1927-1937 5. Advertising Girlhood and Womanhood in Republican Shanghai: Between Family Prosperity and the Fate of the Nation 6. Cultivating of the ‘Whole Child’ among Chinese Christian Elite Girls: Nationalist and Communist Visions of Childhood Part 3: Education and scientific authority 7. Reconceptualising Nüxue (Female Learning and Education): Xu Jiaxing’s Self-Cultivation Textbook for Girls (1906) 8. Science in the Toy Box: Leisure and the Domestication of Technology in the Republican and Mao Eras Part 4: Children’s Voices 9. ‘My Father Sold me as a Maid’: When binü (婢女, ‘maidservants’ or ‘slave-girls’) spoke up in Republican China 10. ‘At the Centre of a Tornado’: Missionary schoolgirls’ experiences of the Second Sino-Japanese War in Shanghai 11. Children at the Margins: Rethinking anthropological perspectives about mid-twentieth century Chinese childhoods

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Author Information

Isabella Jackson is Assistant Professor in Chinese History at Trinity College Dublin, where she was the Principal Investigator of the Irish Research Council Laureate Award ‘CHINACHILD: “Slave-Girls” and the Discovery of Female Childhood in Twentieth-Century China’ (2018-2024). Yushu Geng is a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, having previously been a postdoctoral research fellow at NYU Shanghai and an Irish Research Council research fellow on the CHINACHILD project.

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