Funü zazhi

Funü zazhi (Chinese: 婦女雜誌; The Ladies’ journal) was a women's magazine which was in circulation between January 1915 and January 1931 in the Republican period of China and was the longest-running publication in its category during that period.

History and profile
Funü zazhi was started in Shanghai in January 1915. The magazine was published by the Commercial Press on a monthly basis. The company was one of the leading publishing houses in the country. The founding editor-in-chief of the magazine was Wang Yunzhang who was replaced by an American-educated female journalist Hu Binxia in 1916. During the full tenure of the magazine, Hu Binxia was the only female editor of the paper. Her tenure ended in 1919.

Funü zazhi was distributed in twenty-eight cities of China and also, in Hong Kong, Macao, and Singapore. In the early period it sold 3,000 copies, but soon its circulation rose to 10,000 copies. The magazine folded in January 1931.

Content and audience
Funü zazhi supported women’s rights and their self-education, emphasizing the importance of literature, arts and crafts in this process. The other frequently topics covered in the magazine included women’s health and household economics.

In the period between its start in 1915 and 1919 Funü zazhi featured short stories and translated articles from Japanese women's magazines. These translated articles were about developments in medicine and Western technology. It also often published medicine advertisements. From November 1919 the content of the magazine was radically redesigned, and it began to offer articles on love, free marriage and divorce, female emancipation, women's education, and employment of women. From 1926 and 1931 the topics covered in Funü zazhi were again modified radically, and the magazine included articles which supported traditional values similar to its initial period. However, its focus on medicine continued during this period, and it had a column on medical advice where physicians answered the questions of readers.

Sylvia Li-chun Lin, an assistant professor of Chinese at the University of Notre Dame, researches the ways in which the development of medicine, hygiene, and beauty in China were marketed towards women in magazines like Funü Zazhi in the early Republican period, and the ways in which such ads exploited women. During the early 20th century, China’s political and military defeats with Europe and Japan threatened its position as a global power. This brought about a slew of reformers and “male feminists” who believed the best way to bring China back to its national prominence was to increase the strength of the family, which would by proxy increase the strength of the nation. Leading male feminist writers who extended this rhetoric included Liang Qichao, Yan Fu, and Kang Youwei.

Out of this national re-focusing on family reform came the idea of using scientific advancement to promote health and cleanliness within the family to make the family stronger. The male writers and editors published pieces on how women could increase the efficiency of their domestic production, using products marketed towards them in Funü Zazhi, in order to run a more scientifically managed household. Even the language in the published columns was very scientific, suggesting to women how they could increase or decrease quantities of various scents in their homes to produce the optimal reactions in the olfactory senses of their husbands, in order to foster a stronger relationship with them. This was not a new advancement in China. As Historian Sylvia Li-Chun Lin writes, there had always been a discussion of scientific and health development in the public sphere in China as early as the seventeenth century. However, there was a reinvigoration of this medical and scientific advancement during the early Republican Period as a result of the political reality in China.

These ads were mainly promoted in women’s magazines like Funü Zazhi, depicting an ideal lifestyle and use of products that was only accessible to the urban woman who had disposable income to spend on these goods. Many historians also argue that the fact that these ads were only placed in women’s magazines indicates a larger theme of how the obligation of creating a strong family for the nation was solely placed on women during the early Republican Period. Just as much as women were praised for using these products and creating a stronger family, they were scapegoated for the failures of the nation if they were unable to run this type of family.

The magazine was very popular among young people and was one of the most read popular magazines as voted by Chinese secondary school students.

Medical advertisements
Medical advertisements were the second most popular type of ad promoted in Funü zazhi, with over 900 patent medicine ads being printed in the magazine's 17 year tenure. One major medical ad was for Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People, which was advertised as a blood tonic that could cure a variety of blood and nerve ailments for women (tonics were a very popular type of medicine in China during the early Republican Period). Almost every published edition of Funü zazhi contained an ad for Dr. Williams’ pills, with very few exceptions. In reality, Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People were made of iron oxide and epsom salt, and were originally marketed to American Civil War veterans for diseases like malaria, PTSD, and indigestion. Dr. Williams expanded his line of medicine globally, advertising Pink Pills as a cure for all ailments faced by men and women, with little scientific evidence available on the true efficacy of the Pink Pills. They were advertised in magazines globally using strong visual cues, but no ads were quite as striking as those in Funü zazhi.

Pink Pills ads were published in Funü zazhi during the early Republican Period, alongside testimonials of women who had success with the medicine. Historians like Sylvia Li-Chun Lin question the legitimacy of these testimonials, as they were written by men about the women, and it is impossible to know whether or not they were coerced. Illustrations for Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills often featured anthropomorphized pill bottles with male bodies sitting next to a woman, comforting her through any illness she may have had. While shocking images like this serve to entice readers to keep reading the article, they are also a reflection of the lasting impact of Confucian doctrine during Republican China. As Sylvia Li-Chun Lin writes, although the 1910s began to see a dismantling of traditional Confucian values in China, it would have still been taboo to see a non-family male be seen comforting a woman in the bedroom. The anthropomorphized pill-bottle onto a male body allowed the ad to undertone that a male presence/medicine was solving the ailments of women, while still operating within the deemed social norms of the time.

Another medicine that was advertised heavily in Funü Zazhi was a Japanese pill called Chujuto. This is a pill that is still used by Chinese women today, used to treat not only gynecological problems, but several other general female health problems. Sylvia Li-Chun Lin writes that this medicine was published in a 1915 ad of Funü Zazhi with text depicting the four misfortunes of women on the top (“dying young, women in poor health, female infertility, and not taking Chujuto”), with a picture of Chujuto under it to illustrate the ways in which the medicine could solve these women’s problems. These advertisements were unique according to Lin, because instead of advertising a cure to infertility, the marketing strategies of these ads focused much more on the treatment that a woman would receive for being childless. It reminded women of the ostracization they would experience by in-laws or their own parents, and used the “state of happiness” Chujuto would provide as the main draw for women to purchase and consume the medicine. This idea turned the abstract notion of filial piety into the concrete problem of a woman’s family life, and how she could ensure the happiness of herself and her family by using the medicine to solve infertility. Historian Sylvia Li-Chun Lin argues that these magazines were well-aware of their largely female audience, and tailored their ads to publicize the emotional well-being they could provide women with their product.

Beauty advertisements
A lot of men in the Republican Period of China published “how-to” columns in women’s magazines like Funü Zazhi, teaching women how they could make beauty and cosmetic products at home using easy to source ingredients. For example, another women’s magazine named Nüzi shijie (Chinese: Women’s World), published a very popular column by famous writer and editor Chen Diexian, who provided detailed instructions on how women could make hair tonic. He would even provide options for women who could not afford expensive hair products at the Shanghai markets, suggesting that instead they could use flowers, or other easily sourced materials from home.

Historian Eugenia Lean argues that this impetus of male editors and writers composing how-to guides for women was a product of its time in early Republican China. There were several male feminists and activists who viewed the domestic sphere as a place where policy could be reformed and amended to further the goals of the nation, which resulted in the frenzy to control and police the behavior and actions of women. The domestic manufacturing standards set for these women, which was outlined by men through magazines like Funü Zazhi, was simply an extension of this desire, as Lang argues.

Political content
Around 1919, some of the focus of the magazine also shifted to political advocacy and writing, with several pieces on activism and policy critiques by male feminists being published. Mao Dun, a male feminist writer of this time, published a lot of his essays and columns in Funü zazhi. Mao Dun was very inspired by the writings of Marx and Engles, and wrote a lot of pieces condemning the traditional family unit, arguing along with Marx that it was a unit created by capitalist structures of labor. Mao Dun was very inspired by Engles’ piece “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,” and took his rhetoric one step further by naming patriarchal structures of oppression alongside capitalist structures of oppression as the cause of female oppression. Additionally, he published a recurring column condemning the idea of female chastity, writing that these values have never been historically present in society and only work to oppress women. Historian Yu-Shi Shen argues that unlike other radical socialists of the time, Mao put the issues of women and pre-existing patrilineal standards at the forefront of the issues faced by the state, and included women in the proletariat class struggle.

Legacy
Issues of Funü zazhi were archived and digitized by Heidelberg University.