The History of Women in Beijing

In old Beijing, Chinese New Year provided a rare opportunity to see women out in the open.

Strict Ming and Qing dynasty societal norms confined Han Chinese women to the innermost of courtyard dwellings for most of the year, but at the end of the Chinese New Year celebrations - on the sixteenth day of the first lunar month - it was different. Beijing women crowded the streets in their thousands, making their way to the massive city gates to touch the golden doorknobs. This act was supposed to help them give birth to boys in the new year. The occasion was a spectacle that chroniclers from both the Ming and Qing dynasties described in vivid detail, because the sight of thousands of women with tiny bound lily feet spilling into the hutong alleyways only happened this once a year.

It was however not only the solitary life inside courtyards that made women a rare sight in the streets. The number of women in the city was extremely low compared with men. It is today often mentioned that men are overrepresented in Beijing because of the bygone one child policy, but during the dynasties this imbalance in the numbers was even more pronounced. According to Sidney Gamble’s Social Survey, there were 174 men per 100 women in the city in 1919 - comparatively, the number in 2021 was 105 men to 100 women. The main reason for this historic shortage of women was that officials, merchants and others often only worked in the capital for a certain period, during which they left their wife and children behind in their native place, only to return years later.