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Whatever Happened to Tan Sitong's Wife?—A Footnote in Modern Chinese History⋆
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2009
Extract
Tan Sitong's summary execution at the close of the Hundred Days Reform (1898) inadvertently threw his wife, Li Run, into the public limelight. Following the September coup, the Guowen bao (National News) in Tianjin carried a story, entitled “Tan liefu zhuan” (Biography of the virtuous woman Tan), in which Li allegedly committed suicide by slashing her throat on learning of her husband's fate. She died broken-hearted, it was said, in protest against the wicked court ministers responsible for Tan's death. The story was quickly reprinted in Qingyi bao (The China Discussion), a periodical which Liang Qichao, a reformer in exile, started in Yokohama, Japan, as one prong of his anti-Qing campaign. The report on Li's demise continued to circulate. Twenty years later, when the Chinese scholar, Yi Zhongkui, compiled his Xin shishuo (Sequel to New Account of Tales of the World), he included a short biography of Li Run, based on the Guowen bao account. More recently, in her Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution 1850–1950, Ono Kazuko refers to the suicide story and wisely cautions about its veracity. But she adduces no evidence to confirm what actually did happen to Li Run in 1898.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1995
Footnotes
⋆
This paper was first presented at the Canadian Asian Studies Association Conference, 9–11 June 1994, Calgary, Alberta. It was part of a larger project on Tan Sitong supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. I wish to thank SSHRC for its generous support and Professor Jack Gerson for commenting on an earlier draft of this paper.
References
1 There is very little information available in English on Li Run's life. She is mistakenly named as Li Kuei in Rankin, Mary B., “The emergence of women at the end of the Ch'ing: the case of Ch'iu Chin”, in Women in Chinese Society, ed. Wolf, Margery and Witke, Roxane (Stanford, 1975), p. 54Google Scholar, and as Li Kueh in the index of the same book, p. 311.
2 No. 10, GX25/2/21 (Taibei, 1967), pp. 601–2.
3 Preface 1918 (Taibei, 1968), pp. 526–7.
4 Kazuko, Ono, Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution, 1850–1950 (Stanford, 1989), pp. 38–9.Google Scholar
5 TSTQJ, p. 54.
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10 Unless otherwise indicated, the information on Li Run in this paragraph comes from my interview notes with Liu Pingjun on 7 June 1986, in Linxiang, Hunan.
11 Notes on interview with Mr. Tan Shunzhi, 82 years old, on 9 June 1986 at his home in Liuyang, Hunan.
12 Henghui, Tan and Yingrui, Tan, “Sitonggong shengpingshiji buyi” (Additional information on the life of Tan Sitong), in TSTYZH, pp. 51–2.Google Scholar
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18 Tan Sitong to Wang Kangnian, GX23/5/19, in TSTQJ, p. 503.
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24 A term used in Zhenyi, Guo, Zhongguo funü wenti (The Question of Chinese Women) (Shanghai, 1937), pp. 202–4.Google Scholar See also Youning, Li and Yufa, Zhang, (comp.), Jindai Zhongguo nüquan yundong shiliao (Historical Sources on the Feminist Movement in Modern China) (Taibei, 1975), p. 1187.Google Scholar
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27 Rongning, Long, “Tan Sitong yu wozufu di jiaoyi” (Tan Sitong's friendship with my grandfather), in TSTYZH, p. 431.Google Scholar