Entertaining Inheritance: Women and Property Expansion in Republican China, 1926-1936
This paper critically examines the business endeavours of prominent Chinese women, their navigation of legal complexities, and gives individual agency to narratives of Chinese women in business in Republican China. The introduction of the Republican Civil Code of 1929-30 provided a crucial point of change for women’s property rights while interrupting longstanding patrilineal succession. The implications of such change for women’s access to property and what economic property meant for their commercial endeavours are explored in this paper using the case of the Sheng family, particularly Sheng Aiyi, and her financing of the Paramount Ballroom in Shanghai. While not representative of all families of the time, the Sheng story provides a picture of elite women from prominent families and how they managed and fought for property. What role did property play in shaping elite women’s navigation of commercial enterprise? The individuals in this paper channelled their resources into a multitude of trades, parlaying their networks and finances to invest and establish their respective commercial interests. The property business highlighted in this study, the Paramount entertainment hall, serve as an example of the types of endeavours women from prominent backgrounds became involved in financing. These entertainment ventures were suggestive of the elite Shanghai lifestyle that the women embodied, and ones they shaped to further establish their own role and position in Shanghai society and culture. This paper reveals that while these elite women’s acts in the commercial realm were minimal, their relationship with property evolved with changing family dynamics and property laws, and obtaining property was critical to advancing their economic mobility.
