The early 1990s witnessed the rise of two major academic trends in China studies, namely, a new focus on late imperial women and gender studies, and on literary evolution from the late Qing to early Republican China. Ellen Widmer was one of the initiators of both trends, and Hu Ying quickly emerged as a young leader in these fields. Therefore, their most recent books, under review here, represent and mark the fruition of these two approaches in a dynamic conversation.
In Fiction's Family, Widmer studies family and fiction side by side. For Widmer, “family” refers first of all to the Zhan family located in late Qing Quzhou, western Zhejiang, consisting of the late Qing female writer Wang Qindi (1828–1902), her scholar husband Zhan Sizeng (1832–c.1894), and their two sons Zhan Xi (1850–1927) and Zhan Kai (1861?–1911?) who both published reformist novels. Secondly, it refers to the fictional Wei family...
