China's Grandmothers: Gender, Family, and Ageing from Late Qing to Twenty-First Century

China's Grandmothers, by Diana Lary, aims to chronicle the experiences of Chinese grandmothers from the late Qing dynasty to the present, a topic the author notes is largely overlooked in official and academic literature. Lary reveals that, despite regime changes, wars, and radical political and economic shifts, grandmothers have played a critical—if not always appreciated—role in modern Chinese history and daily life. Lary's methodology is in some ways reminiscent of the approach Gail Hershatter takes in her pathbreaking book The Gender of Memory, which uses the experiences of “doubly marginalized” rural women to challenge official narratives and chronologies of the Mao era.1 Traditionally, due to the Confucian belief that the elderly are worthy of great esteem, old age used to be considered the golden years of one's life. This was particularly the case for women, who, having served their husbands and in-laws for many years, finally gained greater status and authority in the household in old age. However, between the early twentieth century and the present, repeated assaults on Confucian values and the traditional family structure eroded the reverence for elders. Nowadays, grandmothers rarely wield the social control they once had nor are they able to relax much in old age due to their essential role as caregivers for grandchildren in the countryside. Rather than treating Chinese grandmothers as a monolith, Lary's intersectional analysis accounts for differences in grandmothers' experiences according to their age and socioeconomic class, their status as rural or urban residents, and the precise time period in which they lived.This book is inherently interdisciplinary. It makes use of a broad range of sources, including classical and modern Chinese literature, film, memoirs, images, and journalistic accounts, as well as historical, sociological, and anthropological studies. As Professor Emeritus of Modern Chinese History at the University of British Columbia, Lary also draws on her wealth of personal experience as a long-time scholar of China, a granddaughter, and a grandmother. Lary thus uses her own experiences to draw cross-cultural comparisons between the lives of Chinese grandmothers and those of American, British, and Canadian grandmothers in the same period. Writing China's Grandmothers was clearly a labor of love for Lary, and her fascinating life story and impressive career enable her to seamlessly integrate the anecdotal with the academic.China's Grandmothers is organized thematically into thirteen chapters of research, an introduction, and an afterword, as well as a final chapter containing “personal notes,” in which Lary applies the analytical categories addressed in the book to her own family history. Each chapter explores change and continuity over time with respect to a particular aspect of life as a grandmother. The first five chapters highlight grandmothers' historical roles in facilitating childbearing and childrearing and managing the household. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 demonstrate how the social and financial positions of the elderly have changed since the late Qing dynasty and the growing challenges associated with eldercare. Chapters 9 and 10 explore the interrelated issues of contemporary China's weak social safety net and the phenomenon of rural migrant workers moving to cities, leaving behind children to be raised by their aging grandparents. Lary thus reveals the centrality of grandparents, particularly grandmothers, to China's post-Mao economic boom. The final three chapters examine cultural beliefs about death and dying, recreational activities for the elderly, and the future of China's growing senior population.Although China's Grandmothers is ostensibly about just that, the book covers an impressive range of topics in a highly accessible fashion. Lary cleverly uses grandmothers as a lens through which to investigate and interpret changes and continuities in Chinese history, culture, and society. In this way, the book simultaneously touches on the Confucian classics, religion, gender dynamics, political ideology, and social movements, among other topics.This book is suitable for a wide readership—from scholars of China to graduate students to undergraduates and nonspecialist audiences. China's Grandmothers is peppered with references that will speak to readers of different ages and backgrounds with varying degrees of knowledge about China. For example, Lary cites sources as diverse as Pride and Prejudice, Dream of the Red Chamber, and Crazy Rich Asians. From a pedagogical perspective, China's Grandmothers is particularly useful. Not only can the individual chapters be read alone or in succession, but the text contains frequent tables introducing relevant contextual information and terminology. The book also makes generous reference to photos, paintings, poems, idiomatic expressions, and autobiographies, and Lary's gentle, unpretentious tone nicely aligns with the book's portrayal of archetypal loving grandmothers. In this way, Lary's book offers an engaging alternative to a traditional undergraduate textbook.If I had to criticize one thing, I would say that although the book contains plenty of references to overseas Chinese communities, it only briefly addresses the experiences of grandmothers belonging to ethnic minority communities. This minor point aside, China's Grandmothers offers a novel paradigm for researching and teaching the history of modern China.

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