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

Ono Kazuko’s translation reads, “Because childbirth is a public act in which a mother, as
heaven’s surrogate, gives birth to a human being, the surroundings naturally have to be prepared
in full by society.” 525 Pregnant women would enter this institution and receive prenatal care and
education. After the birth, they would remain with the child there until it was weaned at three to
six months, at which time the mothers would be honored for their great deed. The children
would then be placed in a “child-rearing institution” until the age of six, when they entered
primary school. The teachers would be honored for assuming the care and educational
responsibilities of these children. This vision was progressive, indeed, but not feasible for a
country ravaged by war and unstable governments. The closest thing to Kang Youwei’s vision
in China were the kindergartens established in 1930s Canton as part of the city’s progressive
Three-Year Plan.
Dikötter has explored in his works on race, eugenics, and sexuality in Republican China
how, in the scientific medicine rubric, health is an individual concern. 526 Instead of demonic
spirits or evil humors acting upon a powerless person to cause disease, individual measures of
sanitation and cleanliness could go a long way to prevent illness. Fatalism was replaced in part
by individual or social control over one’s health. Furthermore, scientific medicine emphasized a
sharper delineation between the body and the environment. Disease could come from within the
body and was in part dependent upon one’s own actions. This is not too far removed from
traditional Chinese medical ideals about balance or imbalance within the body engendering
health or disease. TCM has a long history of maintaining an internal balance of yin and yang
through ingesting foods and medicines. However, knowledge of anatomy and bodily functions
525
Ono Kazuko, Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution, 1850-1950, ed. Joshua A. Fogel (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1989).
526
Dikötter, Sex, Culture and Modernity in China,and Imperfect Conceptions: Medical Knowledge, Birth Defects,
and Eugenics in China (London: Hurst & Co., 1998).
212