1 The CCP's joining global capitalism has significantly relied on erasure of a socialist past in the public discourse. The extravaganza at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games explicitly demonstrated this.

2 Hou Di, deputy editor-in-chief of Women of China in the Mao era, remembers that the magazine suspended publication after February 1967. But the electronic collection of the magazine does not include the two issues in 1967 and I have not found them in any libraries.

3 See Chen, Tina Mai, “Female icons, feminist iconography? Socialist rhetoric and women's agency in 1950s China,” Gender and History, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2003), pp. 268–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Evans, Harriet, “‘Comrade sisters’: gendered bodies and spaces,” in Evans, Harriet and Donald, Stephanie (eds.), Picturing Power in the People's Republic of China: Posters of the Cultural Revolution (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), pp. 63–78Google Scholar.

4 After the founding of the PRC, over 30 newspapers included a women's supplement and some local Women's Federations also began to publish women's journals. These publications had localized circulation and various durations of existence.

5 Zhongguo funü zazhi jianjie (A Brief Introduction to Women of China), internal circulation of memoirs produced by the Press of Women of China, 1999. It is a CD without page numbers.

6 Women of New China was changed back to Women of China in 1956.

7 The name reflected its membership of the Women's International Democratic Federation. It changed to the All-China Women's Federation in 1957 at its third National Congress.

8 Zijiu, Shen, “Nuola zuotanhui” (“A symposium by Noras”), in Bian, Dong, Suzhen, Li and Jiafen, Zhang (eds.), Nüjie wenhua zhanshi Shen Zijiu (Shen Zijiu, a Woman Fighter on the Cultural Front) (Beijing: Chinese Women Press, 1991), pp. 234–38Google Scholar.

9 Years later Shen recalled an argument between them. “When he failed to win the argument, he angrily uttered, ‘A woman should not talk so much. A talkative woman is a woman with a long-tongue [fond of gossip].’ What an insulting remark!” Ibid. p. 236.

10 See a memoir by Shen's daughter, Lüyi, Zhang, “Ta zhaodaole yao zou de lu” (“She found the road she had been looking for”), in Dong, Li and Zhang, Shen Zijiu, pp. 204–14Google Scholar. For a discussion of Women's Life, see Edwards, Louise, Gender, Politics, and Democracy: Women's Suffrage in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar. The author does not discuss the fact that this influential women's magazine in the Nationalist controlled areas was actually affiliated with the CCP and many CCP writers were frequent contributors.

11 For more information on Shen Zijiu, see Dong Bian's essay “Keqin kejing de Shen dajie” (“A sister worthy of friendship and respect”), in Dong, Li and Zhang, Shen Zijiu, pp. 158–65. The volume contains many essays written by former readers of Women's Life who became CCP officials.

12 For Dong Bian's life, see her daughters' memoirs “Tian Jiaying de haizi huiyi muqing-Dong Bian” (“Tian Jiaying's children remember their mother Dong Bian”), Yanhuang chunqiu, Vol. 12 (1999), http://www.gmw.cn/content/2004-11/21/content_133330.htm, accessed 1 March 2010; and “Dong Bian yi Tian Jiaying zai Yan'an de rizi” (“Dong Bian remembers Tian Jiaying in Yan'an”), Dangshi bolan, Vol. 2 (2010), http://news.ifeng.com/history/zhongguojindaishi/detail_2010_04/27/1461088_0.shtml, accessed 15 May 2010.

13 See “Tian Jiaying's children remember their mother Dong Bian.”

14 Dong's two daughters, Zeng Li and Zeng Zi, could not recall any occasion when their mother took them to parks, shops or hospitals. It was always their father who took them out. Respected by her husband, Dong also enjoyed the institutional childcare support assigned to official families, with a Manchu woman undertaking domestic responsibilities. I interviewed Zeng Li and Zeng Zi on 25 June 2010. During the last ten months of her life, Dong Bian was hospitalized and cared for by her daughters. It was then she related her life story to them. The characters of the daughters' names, zili, mean “self-reliance.”

15 Dong Bian's colleague, deputy editor-in-chief Hou Di, related details of Dong's frugality in my interview with her on 1 July 2010. Hou Di's memoir of Dong Bian, entitled “Ren buyiding weida, dan keyi gaoshao” (“One does not have to be magnificent but can be noble”), is published in Women of China, December 2001, pp. 16–18. An unabridged version of the memoir has this story of Dong Bian refusing to take a car.

16 “Jianmian hua” (“Opening greetings”), Xin Zhongguo funü (Women of New China), No. 1 (1949), p. 6.

17 See Dong Bian, “A sister worthy of friendship and respect.”

18 The other three were Xuexi (Study), Zhongguo qingnian (Youth of China), and Remin wenxue (People's Literature). Hou Di, “Nanyi wangque de naduan lishi” (“Unforgettable history”), internal collection of memoirs produced on a CD by the Press of Women of China in 1999. Xuexi was renamed Hongqi (The Red Flag) in 1958 and Qiushi (Seeking Truth) in 1988. See http://info.information.taojinmen.com/258861/269425, accessed 22 January 2010.

19 The price of a copy of the magazine at the time was 12 Chinese cents. The market success in the socialist period was not so much profit driven since none of the members of the press benefited financially. One male editor complained to me that those elder sisters (leaders) were so frugal that they sat on the huge surplus without even purchasing a car for the press in all those years. They could have easily afforded 20 cars at the time, but instead, everyone had to either ride a bike or take a bus.

20 By 1953 there were 40,000 women officials in the Women's Federation system nationwide. For an examination of the WF's institutional development in the 1950s, see Zheng, Wang, “State feminism'? Gender and socialist state formation in Maoist China,” Feminist Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3 (2005), pp. 519–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The number rose to 60,000 in the 1960s and 90,000 in the 21st century. The total number of women officials in the PRC was 150,000 in 1951 and 764,000 in 1956. See Bian, Dong, Asong, Cai, and Deshan, Tan (eds.), Women de hao dajie Cai Chang (Our Good Elder Sister Cai Chang) (Beijing: Party Central Archives Press, 1992), p. 80Google Scholar.

21 The ACWDF became a member of the WIDF in 1949. Practices initiated by the WIDF became part of the political culture in the PRC, such as the annual celebration of International Children's Day on 1 June. More importantly, in the Cold War era when China had few diplomatic relations with the West, the ACWDF became the most important international channel for the Chinese government, largely via the WIDF, and organized many international cultural exchanges. The international dimension of the ACWDF, an untold story, forcefully challenged the commonly held notion of “China's isolation” in the Mao era. For a study of the early years of the WIDF, see Francisca de Haan, “Continuing Cold War paradigms in the Western historiography of transnational women's organizations: the case of the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF),” Women's History Review (2010).

22 Women of New China, Vol. 11 (1950), p. 46.

23 Li Qiyang's transfer to Beijing was because of the transfer of her husband who was then Xi Zhongxun's secretary. Li became the deputy governor of Gansu province in 1980 and retired in 1988. She has published two highly informative memoirs, Huanghe dongliu (The Yellow River Running East) (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 2003)Google Scholar, and Xibei liuyun (The Northwest Drifting Clouds) (no publisher, which means it is not an officially registered publication, 2008). When I interviewed Li Qiyang in the summer of 2010, she could not remember writing the article, though she had a distinctive memory of creating the Western Women's Pictorial.

24 For the CCP's decision, see “Zhongguo gongchandang dashi ji – 1950” (“Major events of the CCP – 1950”), http://news.enorth.com.cn/system/2006/06/19/001334591.shtml, accessed 24 January 2010.

25 Women of New China, Vol. 13 (1950), pp. 14–15.

26 Ellen Johnston Laing alerted me to the fascinating pictures on the covers of the first volume of The Ladies Journal in 1915. Twelve paintings capture a range of women's work within and outside the domestic setting, including one of a woman picking mulberry leaves and two others picking tea-leaves. The pictures have vastly different significance from those in the Mao era. No class or urban/rural distinctions are suggested as they prominently extol women's virtue of diligence. The contrast between the cover images of two mainstream women's magazines in the 20th century vividly conveys the drastic social, political, economic and cultural changes that have reconfigured gender in China.

27 Interview with Duan Yongqiang, 18 July 2007.

28 Interview with Shi Yumei, 20 July 2009.

29 In the one-year summary published in August 1950, the editorial listed their weakness of connecting with the masses as the major problem and designed plans to address it. For readers' suggestions for improvement of the magazine, see also issues Nos. 11 and 16 in 1950.

30 Hou Di, “Nanyi wangque de naduan lishi” (“An unforgettable period of history”), in the electronic collection Zhongguo funü 60 zhounian jinian (Remembering 60 years of Women of China), compiled by the Press of Women of China, 1999. Internal circulation.

31 Yang Yun, “Shen dajie jiaowo ban kanwu” (“Sister Shen taught me how to run a magazine”), in Dong, Li and Zhang, Shen Zijiu, pp. 166–78. Yang Yun (not to be confused with the woman who committed suicide) was in charge of the editorial group for political education in the mid-1950s. In this essay she gave a detailed account of how Shen made the decision to start this forum and taught her how to select and organize readers' letters in order to incorporate readers' views.

32 See Dong Bian, “A sister worthy of friendship and respect,” p. 162.

33 The detail and stories behind the scenes were provided by Hou Di who was promoted to deputy editor-in-chief in the summer of 1956. See Hou Di, “An unforgettable period of history.”

34 Phone interview with Hou Di, 16 March 2010.

35 For an early discussion of this, see Davin, Delia, Woman-Work: Women and the Party in Revolutionary China (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp.102–05Google Scholar. For a detailed description of CCP women's debates over divorce when drafting the Marriage Law, see Feng, Jin, Deng Yingchao Zhuan (A Biography of Deng Yingchao), Vol. 2 (Beijing: People's Press, 1993), pp. 457–61Google Scholar.

36 Tina Mai Chen, “Female icons, feminist iconography?”

37 For a discussion of the role of urban domestic women in socialist state building in the early 1950s, see Zheng, Wang, “Gender and Maoist urban reorganization,” in Goodman, Bryna and Larson, Wendy (eds.), Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), pp. 189–209Google Scholar.

38 Yingchao, Deng, “Guanyu funü xuanchuan jiaoyu wenti” (“On the issue of women's advocacy and education work”), in Chinese Women Cadre School (ed.), Zhongguo funü yundong wenxian ziliao huibian (An Anthology of Selected Source Materials on the Chinese Women's Movement) (Beijing: Chinese Women Press, 1988), p. 115Google Scholar.

39 Ibid.

40 Women of China, Vol. 8 (1956), pp. 8–9.

41 Office of ACWF (ed.), Zhonghua quanguo funü lianhehui sishi nian (40 Years of the All-China Women's Federation) (Beijing: Chinese Women Press, 1991), p. 94Google Scholar.

42 Manning, Kimberley Ens, “Making a Great Leap Forward? The politics of women's liberation in Maoist China,” Gender and History, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2006), pp. 574–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Phone interview with Hou Di on 10 December 2009. The reader's letter was published in Vol. 7 (1963).

44 Judge, Joan, Precious Raft of History: The Past, the West, and the Woman Question in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

45 Edwards, Louise, Gender, Politics, and Democracy: Women's Suffrage in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

46 Hershatter, Gail, “Local meanings of gender and work in rural Shaanxi in the 1950s,” in Entwisle, Barbara and Henderson, Gail E. (eds.), Re-Drawing Boundaries: Work, Households, and Gender in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 79–96Google Scholar, “The gender of memory: rural Chinese women and the 1950s,” paper presented in the colloquium series of the Program in Agrarian Studies, Yale University, 17 November 2006, and “Virtue at work: rural Shaanxi women remember the 1950s,” in Goodman, Bryna and Larson, Wendy (eds.), Gender in Motion: Division of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China (Lanham: Rowland & Littlefield, 2005), pp. 309–28Google Scholar. Rofel, Lisa, Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Office of ACWF, 40 Years of the All-China Women's Federation, p. 97.

48 The same point was made by Evans, in “Comrade sisters,” p.72, with reference to posters of the Mao era.

49 The evidence of gender bias in the covers of Youth of China does not mean that the journal never used any women-centred images. It was the inconsistent practices that most clearly reveal its editors' unconscious gender bias.

50 Shi Yumei was never able to join the Party because her father had been a Nationalist army officer. Her problematic political background sometimes hindered her work: e.g. she could not interview or photograph high officials.

51 Feminist culture entered the more prominent mainstream media in the form of “model operas” and in newspapers such as People's Daily in the Cultural Revolution.