156 Gender and Space in Rural Britain, 1840–1920
proper implements. Taking a thing like a small iron spud with sharp edges in the right
hand, and inserting the thumb of the right hand into a roll, that just about fi lled up
the spud, when placed inside it, one then takes the skin of the tall nettle in the left
hand, and draws it again and again between the sharp spud, and the thumb covering,
till the fi bres are quite clean.^59Little locates herself within the hegemonic discourse of the West which results
in absolute power in framing the native. She highlights the importance of West-
ern technolog y in developing agriculture, as she writes: ‘it [was] easy enough
to strip the fi bre from the skin, when I had the proper implements’.^60 Here, her
account also raises a complex process of nation-building in another world. Little
relates the importance of rural gender relations to the details of Chinese wom-
en’s lives in the rural. She places Chinese women at the heart of the rural family
and community. Little travels from an exterior, stereotyped perception of Chi-
nese women, to understanding the interiority of Chinese women by anticipating
women’s engagement in the early stage of urbanization in China.^61
Little’s account also reinforces the development of women’s emancipation in
the rise of nationalism in China in the late nineteenth century. Th e rise of nation-
alism in late Qing China refl ects an alternative account of China and makes the
Western hegemonic discourse about China ambiguous. Western hegemonic dis-
course asserts Chinese identity against the non-Chinese, and this discourse helped
the Chinese to reinforce the native resistance movement that had contested the
Manchu regime long before Western powers invaded China. From here, Western
knowledge about China cannot be changed or transformed when Westerners are
brought into contact with local tradition. Th is reminds us that the representation
of China must move beyond the East–West binary. Th e alternative intervention
allows us to look into China and cultural diff erence without producing a binary
opposition. By implication, however, this evokes the margins of the nation-space
and legitimates a politics of the state-representing-the-nation. According to this
view, women occupy a place that confi rms the margins of the nation-state. Chinese
women’s emancipation goes with a national resistance movement. It is not until
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that funü, the Chinese woman,
appears in Chinese history and national politics. It is the struggles of Chinese
women for liberation that consistently reinforce Chinese nationalism.^62
Chinese Rural Women Engaging in Globalization
Little’s account not only reminds us of Sibley’s purifi cation at work in producing
a distinct and exclusive rural community, but also provides new social contact
with others on a rural Chinese farm. First, this chapter has demonstrated the
need to show a transnational idea of rurality. Rather than confi ning the idea of
rurality within a region, we need to see its distinctiveness to better understand