Historical Significance

Funü shibao 婦女時報 (The women’s eastern times) captures the miscellany of one of the most momentous eras in modern Chinese history. Three issues of the journal were published in the months preceding the 1911 Revolution which ended some 2,000 years of imperial rule. Two further issues saw print on the eve of the formal establishment of China’s first Republic. One of the few journals to survive this historical transition, Funü shibao continued to be published through the tumultuous early Republic. It survived an aborted Second Revolution, a thwarted monarchic restoration, and the onslaught of warlord chaos less through diplomacy than through silence. There was a nine month hiatus in the journal’s publication following what would become known as National Humiliation Day — May 25 1915, the day President Yuan Shikai accepted Japan’s Twenty-one Demands. Another hiatus of seven months surrounded Yuan’s restoration attempt which was inaugurated on January 1, 1916. The last eight of Funü shibao’s twenty-one issues appeared as the Great War raged in Western Europe.