Episode 3190
The Ladies' Journal
Wed, 2026-Jan-28 00:41 UTC
Length - 2:45
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day, your daily dose of knowledge from Wikipedia's finest articles.
The featured article for Wednesday, 28 January 2026, is The Ladies' Journal.
The Ladies' Journal (Chinese: 婦女雜誌; pinyin: Fùnǚ zázhì) was a Chinese monthly women's magazine which ran from 1915 to 1931. Produced by the Shanghai-based Commercial Press, the largest publishing house in Republican China, the journal was the longest-lasting and widest-circulating women's magazine during the period, seeing a circulation of around 10,000 copies by 1921. The magazine began publication under the editorship of Wang Yunzhang, who also edited the Fiction Monthly. Described by later commentators as conservative in its early years, The Ladies' Journal included coverage of domestic issues, women's education, and serialized short stories, mainly of the "Mandarin duck and butterfly" genre of Chinese romantic fiction. Initially written in Classical Chinese, it began publishing short stories in written vernacular Chinese in 1917 and had fully transitioned to vernacular by 1920.
Accompanying criticisms for its conservative stances and a cultural shift towards feminism among New Culture journals following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, The Ladies' Journal took a turn towards coverage of social issues and translations of foreign literature, especially after Zhang Xichen became editor-in-chief in 1921. Although Zhang had no prior experience or interest writing about women's issues, he became a dedicated liberal feminist and recruited like-minded contributors to the journal, including his assistant editor Zhou Jianren. As a follower of Swedish feminist Ellen Key, Zhang promoted a more open attitude to sexuality and love marriage over arranged marriages. A 1925 special issue on the "new sexual morality" attracted significant backlash. This, alongside political disagreements with the Commercial Press, led to Zhang and Zhou's removal as editors. Zhang established a competitor journal entitled The New Woman, while The Ladies' Journal returned to a more conservative stance and a focus on domestic topics. Already struggling financially due to decreased advertiser investment during the Great Depression, the journal was cancelled after the press's headquarters were destroyed in a month-long battle between Chinese and Japanese forces.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:41 UTC on Wednesday, 28 January 2026.
For the full current version of the article, see The Ladies' Journal on Wikipedia.
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