Being a woman and a warrior in modern China : Xie Bingying’s autobiographical practices, 1920s-1980s

Abstract

There are two prevailing public perceptions of Xie Bingying 谢冰莹 (1906–2000): as a rebellious daughter leaving the patriarchal family and as a courageous soldier dedicated to national salvation. The former aligns with the emphasis on women’s emancipation since the late Qing period, which intertwined individualism and nationalism and heralded a new page in modern Chinese literature. The latter stems from Xie’s involvement in the Chinese civil war and anti-imperialist struggles throughout the twentieth century. Both perceptions encompass Xie’s experiences of domestic, social, and national wars, establishing her as a recognised woman warrior and weaving her story into the spectrum of women warriors in Chinese history. Historians often rely on Xie’s autobiographical writings as primary sources to study Chinese women’s wartime involvement. However, less attention has been paid to the nuanced dimensions of Xie’s emotional struggles in factional conflicts, her construction and reconstruction of war memories, and her efforts to empower herself and ordinary women through the establishment of an intimate female community on the frontlines. Instead, her lived experience has often been reduced to a grand patriotic narrative centred around specific historical events rather than capturing the dynamic changes, ruptures, and continuity in her life. How did a female warrior situate herself in wars on various levels at different life stages? To what extent does her constant revision of memory relate to her geopolitical mobility from mainland China to Taiwan and the US? How did she navigate women’s wartime corps to reconcile ‘crisis femininity’ and the exploitation of women’s emotional labour by the nationalist agenda? Overall, what was a modern-day woman warrior, and how did she negotiate with herself and others? In China, the interpretation of first-person wartime accounts is still in its early stages, and the field has not yet fully developed a reading of traumatic experiences that distinguishes it from interpretations in Western warfare. Through a textual analysis of Xie’s autobiographical writing, this study aims to explore her gendered, transnational, and intergenerational war memories, with a particular focus on a woman warrior’s subjectivity in war remembrance. It also discusses how Xie worked into this seemingly nation-oriented and male-oriented discourse of war and reconciled its violence with individualistic humanity and female affect.