| Chinese women's sports and physical education ("tiyu") developed in the first half of the twentieth century in an atmosphere of foreign menace and national crisis. Tiyu was promoted as part of nation-building, a tool to reshape bodies, to redefine Chinese masculinity and femininity, to counter the haunting effeminate image of the "Sick Man of Asia," and to bring China to the status of a strong and independent nation.;The rapid growth of Chinese women's tiyu brought physical education into girls' schools and female tiyu professionals to teach it. Chinese women participated in highly publicized national and international athletic competitions. Media representations displayed strikingly changed ideas of liberated modern women's appearances and behavior. The new aesthetic and fashion concept of jianmei, the robust beauty of a healthy, athletic woman, allowed sleeker clothing for fit bodies.;During the period of Japanese aggression from 1931 to 1945, the Nationalist government's centralizing policies regarding tiyu increasingly emphasized masculinity, military training, and war preparation. Women's roles appeared contradictory. State ideology insisted women should nurture the threatened Chinese masculinity while in the interest of public morals the state tried to regulate female dress and behavior.;The experiences of two outstanding, neglected women illustrate these themes: Zhang Huilan (1898--1996), the first Chinese woman to get a Ph.D. in physical education and the first Chinese Chair of the Tiyu Department at Ginling Women's College, and Li Lili (1915--), the "athletic movie star." These women served as distinctive discourses for institutional powers to influence nation building through the manipulation of women's bodies. Simultaneously, their international experiences brought Chinese nation-state-building into a global context.;This study of the role of Chinese women and tiyu in nation-building examines the interaction among social and political forces, including Western missionaries, various nationalist groups, and urban literate feminists, gender ideologies of citizens, and "tiyu". It is based on government documents, semi-official publications, journals and magazines published in Shanghai, dissertations and theses, archived correspondence, university directories, student newspapers, unpublished memoirs, films, interviews, and other contemporary scholarly and popular writings. |
