Representations of Childhood and Youth in Early China (review)

The study of Chinese childhood is a fairly new field. Earlier, in 2002 Anne Kinney published an edited book, The Chinese View of Childhood (University of Hawaii Press), which covers eleven articles on Chinese childhood from the early to modern period. Representation of Childhood and Youth in Early China focuses on childhood in early China, particularly Han China, with emphasis on the Former Han dynasty. Using the dynastic history (Shiji and Hanshu), newly excavated legal fragments and other documents from the tombs of Han and the previous Qin dynasty, Biographies of Exemplified Women (by Liu Xiang), Zhuanchuan, Confucian and other pre-Qin and Han philosophical works, the author explores Chinese childhood from political, philosophical, cosmological and social contexts. While her focus was on the Former Han, she traced ideas and development to pre-Han era.

Representation of Childhood and Youth, as the title suggests, deals with concepts of childhood from surviving writings (which Dr. Kinney argued must have reason to be preserved). Anne Kinney explores the issue from various angles and discusses both "conscious thought and elaborated theories as well as unconscious assumption," to understand the "presupposition, expectations, questions, arguments and justifications" (pp.1-2). However, Dr. Kinney cautions us on possible discrepancy between theories and practices as well as variations according to an individual's, social, geographical or educational background.

The coverage of this book is from embryo to late adolescent. Kinney uses the age of nineteen as the utmost age of youth, but also extends to the early 20s . This scope of coverage is probably unprecedented in comparing with the study of childhood in other cultures or for modern childhood. Kinney includes the embryos because of the Han concept of fetus education. She also related the issue of child to Han cosmology. In addition, she keenly observed that the position of a child in traditional China could be retained through out an individual's entire life, as long as the parents were alive. So chapter 3, on the aristocratic child, includes adult offspring.

The book is divided into six chapters: discovering childhood in early China, the precocious child, the aristocratic child, infant abandonment, girls, and the magical manipulation of childhood.

Kinney argues that prior to the Han dynasty, there was little mention of children, but during the Han dynasty childhood suddenly became an intellectual focus. She lists a number of reasons for the new discourses on children. Among them are: the establishment of a centralized government, the rising influence of Confucianism, the frequency of a young child ascending the throne as the Han emperor, as well as the development of Han cosmology which corresponds the universe to human development.

At the center of the Confucian discourse on children was the advocacy for education, especially the moral instruction of children. The Han Confucians (or Ru), believed a child at birth was undeveloped or incomplete, and advocated the transformative power of education. Moreover, concern over the preservation of the dynasty as relating to the role played by the ruler, raised the urgency for educating the princes, especially after the reign of Wudi (r. 141-87 BCE).

This interest in education was also in part a response to the needs of the new centralized government that sought to recruit honest and qualified bureaucrats. Eventually not only princes, but other boys also received education through government schools. Kinney argued that schools were established in the capital and in the provinces as well. Moreover, in the reign of Wang Mang (r. 9-23 CE), he proposed to establish an elementary school in every village.

Han Confucians believed a virtuous adult was the cumulative work of a long and gradual process that began at conception. The education of children, therefore, was pushed back to the stage of embryos. "Fetus education" was emphasized in several Han Confucian works. This emphasis on embryo is also related to the Han cosmology, and Kinney contends that the Chinese word embryo was corresponding to the word ji in the "Great...