Ch.8 China & the World

In chapter eight one section that stood out to me was Women in the Song Dynasty. In this section I read about how women's lives were (again) negatively impacted and changed during the "golden age" and that there was a divide between women and men. During the Song dynasty, because of economic growth and the practice of Confucianism, patriarchal restrictions on women increased. A Song dynasty historian, Sima Guang, states “the boy leads the girl, the girl follows the boy; the duty of husbands to be resolute and wives to be docile begins with this“ (371). However, one thing that was surprising is that a man’s masculinity (in the Song dynasty) wasn’t based off of athleticism or physique but “calligraphy, scholarship, painting and poetry” (371). When I first read this I thought it was odd because typically back then women had the jobs that were known to be more on the artsy side such as calligraphy and painting. Women were also viewed as distractions to men’s aspirations. Also, sadly a common and horrific practice that women endured during the 10^th / 11^th century C.E. was foot binding. The practice literally involved wrapping girls’ feet tightly to the point of breaking bones all to gain a small, frail, esthetically pleasing look.