A History of Aging in Qing China: Self-Representations in Personal Narratives of the Elderly

This book approaches the history of aging and the elderly in Qing China. It looks at human aging experiences in the Qing dynasty--a significant period with the biggest aged population that ever existed in imperial China--through an analysis of the direct voices of men and women as contained in their personal writings. The aged people are always respected in Chinese society and filial piety is a core value of Chinese cultural tradition but the voices of the elderly does not always find its way into research literature. The chapters in this monograph take a close look at how the elderly in Qing China shared their aging process and how they voiced their joy, challenges, and frustration in their late years. History is not the monopoly of a single gender, class, race, or age group. Without the voices of the elderly, history is never complete. This book represents efforts to restore the elderly to history, and is an invitation to further discussion about Chinese historical gerontology as a newsubfield. It is of interest to students and researchers of history, historical gerontology, aging studies, gender studies, cultural studies, sociology, and Asian studies.

Clara Wing-chung Ho is Professor of History at the Hong Kong Baptist University. Her long-term research work focuses on issues related to gender and age in late imperial China. She has authored/edited/co-edited twenty books and published more than ninety single-authored journal articles and book chapters in English and Chinese. She was elected Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities in 2011. On an RGC-Fulbright Senior Research Award, she served as a Fulbright Scholar and Visiting Professor of History at Northeastern University in Boston in the 2012-13 academic year. In 2021, she was awarded ＂Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship＂ by the Research Grants Council, HKSAR. In 2024, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University.