Sporting Gender Women Athletes And Celebritymaking During Chinas National Crisis 193145

Author Gao (history, Ryerson University) is the first to cover the rise to fame of Chinese female athletes in the early part of the twentieth century. From the Japanese-engineered Mukden Incident of 1931 to the end of WWII, a sense of impending war affected Chinese culture, which spurred Communists and Nationalists alike to promote strengthening of the country's citizens' bodies through tiyu (physical education, sports, and physical culture)in their quest to build a strong, militant nation. This was coupled with the modernizing and liberating of women after the revolution of 1911. The author uses the lives of leading women athletes as windows into the contemporary culture and the meaning of gender, sports, and nation at the time of the national crisis. She aims to address in each chapter the common themes of personal fates and changes in gender, the meaning of sports accomplishments, media influence, fashion, and state control.