The Liberation Of Thought. "xiang" With The Women Of The Hundred Days Period

Since the late Qing dynasty, especially during the WuXu Reform Movement time, the general sense of crisis stimulated people with lofty ideals to make efforts to find a way out for the people, and explore the strategy to save the country. Compare with Japan and the West, besides the political reforms and democratic republic requirements, concerning to women's status, they were aware of that women's level of civilization affected the nation's power and even its survival, that led to the women's liberation movement, which took banning feet-binding and establishing schools for women as its main content and to change women's state of being discriminated or oppressed as its goal.Newspaper Xiang, an important public opinion fighting field of Hunan Modernization and Reform, carried out deep and sharp criticism to the custom of foot-binding from both personal and national aspects. Also, under its advocacy, Hunan feet-binding Banning association was founded, which broke the feudal ethical code shackles, promoted the opening up of society and awoken woman's self-awareness, so it strongly promoted development of Hunan women's liberation movement at the end of the Qing Dynasty.In removing the physical imprisonment of women, Newspaper Xiang journalists realized that women's education was a breakthrough of women's liberation. In 1898, Chinese Female School (also known as Jingzheng female private school or Jingshi female private school), the first Female School run by Chinese was officially opened, to which Newspaper Xiang offered comprehensive attention and report. Being an active role in opening female school of Hunan, Newspaper Xiang broke the traditional concept of woman without talent is virtuous. To a certain extent, it eased the pressure of female school establishment and created favorable atmosphere of public opinion for the first Hunan female school in 1903.For banning feet-binding and establishing schools for women, the two concerns during the Women's Liberation Movement of WuXu time, Newspaper Xiang , as a positive role in guiding public opinion, had provided a wide range of publicity. With a profound impact, it gave abundant inspiration for the future study of women's liberation. Though it inevitably limited in awareness of women's liberation, we should affirm its due contribution to the women's liberation movement during the WuXu time.