Women and Chinese Patriarchy: Submission, Servitude, and Escape

Around 1930, an eight-year-old Janet Lim was sold in China by her destitute parents and then imported into Singapore as a mui tsai, an unpaid domestic servant. Her experiences of servitude, her subsequent escape, and the impact of those years on the rest of her life are vividly recalled in an interview for this book. Janet Lim's story is not uncommon. Through the centuries, Chinese women and girls have been bought and sold for marriage, concubinage, domestic service and prostitution in China and among Chinese communities overseas. Although the practice was apparently stamped out after World War II, it has reappeared on a large scale since the mid-1970s. This collection reveals many forms of servitude that Chinese women have endured, and the avenues of escape open to some of them. The authors are anthropologists, historians and sociologists, but the book is enriched also by contributions from the participants - a social worker, a mui tsai, and a colonial civil servant. The chapters are based on original documentary or oral research and personal experience, and, throughout the book, the voices of the women, their owners and their missionary rescuers can be clearly heard.