Editors’ Introduction

We are pleased to present issue 9.1 of the Journal of the British Association for Chinese Studies.

This issue focuses on Chinese female (academic) identities in a variety of different contexts, starting with a thought-provoking essay by Yan Wu (Swansea University) on the experience of being a Chinese female academic in the UK.

Meng Li (Hong Kong Polytechnic University) follows by asking in what ways well-educated Chinese women are stigmatised in popular culture. Li argues that it is the two motifs of estrangement and escape that reflect how Chinese intellectual women are represented and rendered in the Chinese popular cultural context with frequent animosity, prejudice and discrimination.

Kailing Xie (University of Warwick) investigates how gender affects the career and reproductive choices of China’s well-educated daughters, particularly those working in academia. Drawing on a sub-set of a larger data sample, Xie analyses how the existing socio-political discourse constructs a naturalised female subject bound by reproductive norms, and discusses the implications of this for women’s careers.

Yejun Zou (King’s College London and the Humboldt University of Berlin) takes a comparative and historical view by examining the practicality of socialist feminism as an alternative model for contemporary Chinese feminism through an analysis of the depiction of women in the literary works of Ding Ling and Christa Wolf. Zou offers insights into the way their writings negotiate women’s concern with the official narrative of life in socialist states, and the extent to which these texts illuminate alternative Chinese feminist approaches in a contemporary context.

Denise Kwan (University of Westminster) returns to the UK context in her examination of how practices of dressing and adornment are employed to manage the otherness experienced by second-generation British Chinese women. Employing a creative ethnographic methodology with a focus on material practices, her research vividly demonstrates the significance of everyday actions and objects in the negotiation of power and the formation of ethnic women’s identities.

The first issue of 2019 clearly reflects our mission as an open access, free, and forward-looking academic journal. We are committed to promoting Chinese Studies as a distinct discipline, and to providing dedicated editorial support for PhDs and ECRs. Gender and ethnic equality in Chinese Studies is of particular concern to us. Come and join us in a round table discussion on new models of open access publishing in Asian Studies at the AAS in Denver on Saturday, 23 March.

Finally, a big shout-out to Sarah Dauncey for her many years of selfless dedication to JBACS, and a warm welcome to Heather Inwood, who has now joined Gerda Wielander as co-editor.

We hope you enjoy the new issue, and that it will inspire you to submit your next research article to us.

Gerda Wielander and Heather Inwood