Tsai Chin - Qiu Jin 秋瑾蔡琴 1981

This song was composed by Su Lai, 蘇來, lyrics written by Xu Naisheng, 許乃勝. Thank you Tsai Chin so much for introducing me to Qiu Jin and all that she stood for. What an absolute privilege it has been to discover Qiu Jin, Wang Zhaojun and others during my journey into Chinese Music and Culture. Tsai Chin recorded this song in 1981, at which time, only Doe Ching’s 1953 film starring Li Lihua had documented her life on screen. Since then, Shanghai Film Studio produced Qiu Jin: A Revolutionary in 1983, starring Xiuming Li as Qiu Jin. In 1984, Qiu Jin: A Woman to Remember followed, a Hong Kong TV Series, starring Lisa Wang as Qiu Jin. Recently, two major tributes have emerged. In 2009, Autumn Gem (the literal meaning of Qiu Jin) became the first documentary feature on Qiu Jin in the U.S, starring Li Jing. In 2011, The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake featured Yi Huang as Qiu Jin in a Herman Yau directed epic film. I decided to forego putting Tsai’s lyrics in the video because her voice and the images of Qiu Jin need no ’distraction’. You can find the mandarin, pinyin, and English lyrics at the end of this section. Some Details of Qiu Jin’s life. Qiu Jin was born in Xiamen, Fujian, and grew up in her ancestral home, Shanyin Village, Shaoxing, Zhejiang. Her family was moderately wealthy, and she received a good education. She was particularly interested in literature, horseback riding and sword performing. At the age of 21, she had an arranged marriage to Wang Tingjun, the son of a wealthy merchant, and had two children, Wang Yuande, and Wang Guifen. She became extremely unhappy in her marriage, and her poetry-writing became her solace. In 1903, she moved with her husband to Beijing where he had purchased an official post. Here, Qiu Jin started reading feminist writings and became interested in women’s education. She finally left her husband in 1903, to study in Japan. She became vocal in her support for women’s rights, calling for improved access to education for women, and the abolition of the practice of foot-binding on women. At the time it was still customary for women in China to have their feet bound at the age of five, leaving their freedom of movement severely restricted and becoming dependent on men! Qiu Jin returned to China in 1905, and joined the Triads, an underground society who advocated for the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty. In 1906, she started a feminist newspaper called Chinese Women, encouraging women to train for work and become financially independent. In 1907 she became head of the Datong school for sport teachers in Shaoxing, but which was really intended for the military training of revolutionaries. Qiu and her cousin, Hsu His-lin, began working together to unify the various secret revolutionary groups in order to overthrow the Manchu government. On July 12, 1907, the authorities arrested Qiu Jin at her school. She was tortured but refused to admit her involvement in activities. She was convicted on the evidence of two of her revolutionary poems - and a few days later she was publicly beheaded in her home village, Shanyin, at the age of 31. Qiu Jin was acknowledged immediately by the revolutionaries as a heroine, and thus became the first female martyr of the 1911 Revolution that followed. She was the first to attempt to educate, mobilise and emancipate Chinese women as a group, and single-handedly brought the notion of women’s rights to national attention, without any movement behind her. She is buried beside West Lake in Hangzhou.