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

methods of obstetrics and maternal and child health. Tuqiang used photography in its yearbooks
to carve out an image of itself and to present this modern image to the world.
The most striking image upon opening the 1936 yearbook of the Guangzhou Tuqiang
Midwifery School is of the honor students. Clad in qipao or fur-collared jackets, with permed
coiffures, plucked eyebrows, and makeup, these women are differ radically from the traditional
jieshengpo (Figure 5.8). These midwives are young, attractive, educated, urbane women. They
look confident, like they know what they are doing, though some look better suited to the pages
of a fashion magazine than a delivery room. Nonetheless, the image these photographs portray is
one of modernity. As an FNMS quarterly report stated, photographs such as these “show that an
intelligent type of young Chinese woman is being attracted to the midwifery course.” 567
The Chinese have long enjoyed forming and joining group organizations. This is not a
new phenomenon, but traditionally this type of cohort formation applied to males. What is
different here is the way these groups, the graduating classes of midwives, present and represent
themselves. These are women who are forming new public, social, professional, modern groups.
The Tuqiang women, and the school, were attempting to create a modern, public image. The
idea of a class photo in itself is a modern contrivance. The leaders of the First National
Midwifery School no doubt wished to convey modernity to their first class of modern-trained
old-style midwives with a class photo (Figure 5.9), just as the Tuqiang photos imbue the new
graduates with a measure of respectability and cleanliness, even glamour. These images
represent the rapid transformation of childbirth in China in just a few short decades.
567 Yang, "Control of Practising Midwives in China."
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