Women and Chinese patriarchy : submission, servitude, and escape / edited by Maria Jaschok and Suzanne Miers.

Cover title: Women & Chinese patriarchy.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 268-285) and index.

Women in the Chinese patriarchal system : submission, servitude, escape and collusion / Maria Jaschok and Suzanne Miers -- Girls' houses and working women : expressive culture in the Pearl River delta, 1900-41 / Rubie S. Watson -- San po tsai (little daughters-in-law) and child betrothals in the new territories of Hong Kong from the 1890s to the 1960s / James Hayes -- Chinese prostitution in Singapore : recruitment and brothel organisation / James Francis Warren -- Mui tsai through the eyes of the victim : Janet Lim's story of bondage and escape / Suzanne Miers -- Implementing government policy for the protection of women and girls in Singapore 1948-66 : recollections of a social worker / Koh Choo Chin -- Chinese patriarchy and the protection of women in 19th-century Hong Kong / Elizabeth Sinn -- Chinese 'slave' girls in Yunnan-Fu : saving (Chinese) womanhood and (western) souls, 1930-1991 / Maria Jaschok -- Social Christianity, American feminism and Chinese prostitutes : the history of the Presbyterian Mission Home, San Francisco, 1874-1935 / Sarah Refo Mason -- Protected women in 19th-century Hong Kong / Carl T. Smith -- Female migrants in Singapore : towards a strategy of pragmatism and coping / Claire Chiang -- Traditionalism, continuity and change / Maria Jaschok and Suzanne Miers.

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.