Chinese Basket Babies
A German Missionary Foundling Home and the Girls It Raised (1850s-1914)
by Julia Stone
Paperback (Published)
(September 2013)
ISBN: 9783447069908
6.65 x 9.45 inches
Price: $82.00
In stock
This is a study of European “mothers” and Chinese “daughters”, detailing their everyday interactions and analysing cross-cultural transfers. Reconstructed biographies uncover their lives after arranged marriages to Christians. Many pioneered new roles for women in southern Guangdong province. Chinese Basket Babies is the first micro-study of a Western missionary foundling home in 19th-century China.
Although the term and its meaning are little known today, everyone knew what foundlings were in the 19th century. They were unwanted infants abandoned by their parents. The plight of such children in China, believed by some to be eaten alive by wild animals, raised an outcry in parts of Western Europe at that time. Chinese Basket Babies is a study of a home intended to rescue these children, almost all baby girls, started by one of the earliest German Protestant women’s missionary associations in the early 1850s. Established in the British colony of Hong Kong, Findelhaus Bethesda (Berlin Foundling Home for Girls) collected and reared unwanted girls until its closure in 1919. It was a bold missionary experiment in social engineering to create ideal Chinese Christian women. Female infanticide and child abandonment were key factors in the mushrooming of foundling homes, both missionary-run and indigenous, in China from the mid-19th century. Julia Stone analyses the complex relationship between the two social phenomena, thereby deepening understanding of the development of child welfare provision in China. However, unlike most scholarly works on Chinese foundling homes, she concentrates on the children and their lives. This is a study of European “mothers” and Chinese “daughters”, detailing their everyday interactions and analysing cross-cultural transfers. Reconstructed biographies uncover their lives after arranged marriages to Christians. Many pioneered new roles for women in southern Guangdong province. Chinese Basket Babies is the first micro-study of a Western missionary foundling home in 19th-century China.
- By (author) Julia Stone
Other Titles in this Series
Krieg, Staat und Militar in der Ming-Zeit (1368-1644)
Auswirkungen militarischer und bewaffneter Konflikte auf Machtpolitik und Herrschaftsapparat der Ming-Dynastie
Volume 22
Selbstkultivierung und Weltgestaltung
Die praxiologische Philosophie des Yan Yuan (1635-1704)
Volume 23
Dangerous Tunes
The Politics of Chinese Music in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the People's Republic of China since 1949
Volume 3
The Dunhuang Region during Tibetan Rule (787-848)
A Study of the Secular Manuscripts Discovered in the Mogao Caves
Volume 24
Tan Sitong (1865-1898)
Jenseits vom Reich der Mitte: Positionen des politischen und philosophischen Diskurses der spaten Qing-Zeit
Volume 25
Der Westen und das Reich der Mitte
Die Verbreitung westlichen Wissens im spatkaiserlichen China
Volume 27
Gesellschaftsunternehmen und Gesellschaftsrecht in China und Europa
Ein Beitrag zur Max Weber-Forschung
Volume 28
Kulturelle Identitatskonstruktionen in der Post-Suharto Zeit
Chinesischstammige Indonesier zwischen Assimilation und Besinnung auf ihre Wurzeln
Volume 21
Similar Books
‘For You I Study, For You I Work, For You I Live, For You I Am Ready To Even Give My Life’
Essays in Honour of Francis (Frank) J Moloney, SDB
A Late Antique Harrowing of Hell and Its Medieval Reception
Eusebius of Alexandria's Sermons 15 and 17 (CPG 5524; 5526) and their Latin Rewritings
Volume 99
Ars Prophetica
Theology in the Poetry of Twentieth-Century Hebrew Poets Avraham Halfi, Shin Shalom, Amir Gilboa, and T. Carmi
Beyond Sovereign Courts
Agents and Practices in Early Modern Spanish and Habsburg Diplomacy
Volume 3
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
Fear, Fear of God, God-Fearers
Philological and Historical Perspectives on the World of Ancient Judaism and Christianity
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Liturgia semper reformanda
Adaptations and accommodations in the liturgy in light of canon 838 of the Code of Canon Law
Pre-Christian Religions, Rituals, and Beliefs in Central and Northern Europe
Interdisciplinary Investigations
Volume 5
