Tender Matters

It is difficult to ignore death when studying early twentieth-century China. Foreign invasions, civil wars, chronic banditry, and political strife, as well as the social and economic disruptions they created, had formed a mutually reinforcing cycle of death that terrorized ordinary Chinese on a daily basis. While this situation was unkind to all, life was particularly precarious for infants and young children, who perished at high rates due to contagious diseases, malnutrition, and an unstable environment. While the premature death of young Chinese children has occupied a prominent place in statistics and public discourses, rarely have researchers examined the expressions and emotions of individual Chinese parents who experienced child death firsthand in early twentieth-century China. This chapter fills this lacuna through a case study of representative memorial narratives authored by Chinese fathers and mothers with different political and spiritual leanings. Writings authored by bereaved young parents have also revealed a rising personal anxiety about child death in this period. This chapter suggests that the proliferation of public discourses promoting the healthy, living child intensified parents’ anxiety and guilt over child mortality. They also amplified the desolate and underinvested socio-cultural space of child death, where few old supportive institutions (such as specialized mourning and burial rites) were in place, and few new ones were invested. But the underdefined and underinvested space of child death also stimulated parents in early twentieth-century China to improvise and innovate. Through a situated reading and comparison of select cases, this chapter demonstrates a wide range of mourning approaches and emphases. It also identifies a strong desire and capacity of educated parents in this period to confront a complex and conflicted self through mourning for their children. Instead of projecting images of model parenthood, these parents preferred self-anatomy and self-indictment. And they were more willing to offend and provoke than pamper mainstream tastes and official sensibilities. By documenting and sharing radically personal experiences, emotions, and ritual innovations, these bereaved parents allowed a nascent affective community to emerge and grow. They did not let the death of their children become a statistic. And they did not allow dominant ideologies and sentiments to decide how they should feel.