BUILDING THE NATION THROUGH WOMEN'S HEALTH: MODERN ...

district of silk weavers that Marjorie Topley and Janice Stockard researched in their studies of
marriage resistance among silk weavers. 499 These women were literal spinsters in that they often
did not marry and instead lived together in same-sex communities. We can infer that the Shunde
midwives were from communities that encouraged, or at least did not discourage, women from
attending school and working outside the home. Furthermore, as the Chinese silk industry
declined, many of the spinsters may have moved into midwifery. After all, the spinster and the
midwife were similar in their respective asexuality, for it was uncommon for women of either
profession to marry.
The women whom Kang Cheng and Shi Meiyu trained in their hospitals were more like
early twentieth-century American public health nurses than the hospital nurses we see today.
Many of them were from mission schools affiliated with their hospitals; their families were
Christian. However, according to Shemo, a few non-Christian daughters of officials started but
did not complete their training. They gave lectures on morals and methods of hygiene, delivered
babies, and proselytized to their patients about the evils of grime and germs. Kang and Shi
taught their nurses self-reliance, autonomy, and decision-making skills, and to refer to Western
physicians only for difficult cases. In the 1910s, Shi had her graduates set up their own
dispensaries. By this time, their nurses in Jiujiang had seen over 14,000 patients in the hospital,
in dispensaries, and on home visits. 500
Requirements for nursing school entrants at Peiyang Hospital in Tianjin, run by Jin
Yamei, were that they be five feet tall, have unbound feet, and be able to write a 100-character
essay in Chinese. The curricula included courses in Chinese, anatomy, physiology, and
499 Janice Stockard, Daughters of the Canton Delta: Marriage Patterns and Economic Strategies in South China,
1860-1930 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1989), Marjorie Topley, "Marriage Resistance in Rural
Kwangtung," in Women in Chinese Society, ed. Margery Wolf and Roxane Witke (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1975): 67-88.
500 Shemo, ""An Army of Women,'" 98, 159.
201