Qiu Jin | revolutionary
(1875-1907)
“With all my heart I beseech and beg my 200 million female compatriots to assume their responsibility as citizens. Arise! Arise! Chinese women arise!”- Qiu Jin
In 1904, Qiu Jin, a wealthy Chinese wife, mother, poet, and feminist, tired of the severe patriarchal restraints placed on her intellectual and political development, shocked Beijing society. Leaving her family behind, she sailed to Japan to enroll in college and meet with like-minded Chinese revolutionaries, who sought to overthrow their corrupt government. She described the journey in her poem, “Regrets; Lines Written En Route to Japan”:
Unbinding my feet I clean out a thousand years of poison,
With heated heart arouse all women’s spirits.
Alas, this delicate kerchief here,
Is half stained with blood, and half with tears.
When she returned to China in 1906, Jin had morphed into a fearless revolutionary leader, famous for her swordplay, cross-dressing and bomb-making skills. She ran the Datong School—recruiting young revolutionaries—and started a radical feminist magazine called the Chinese Women’s Journal. In 1907, Jin passed from brilliant activist to martyr, when she was tortured and beheaded at the age of 31 for allegedly conspiring to overthrow the Qing government.
