Talk:Fu Shanxiang

A fact from Fu Shanxiang appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 17 September 2014 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Fu Shanxiang is known as the first female Zhuangyuan because she took first place in the 1853 imperial civil service exams for women given by the rebel Taiping Heavenly Kingdom?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2014/September. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Fu Shanxiang.

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Did Fu takes the exams?

Originally I wrote:

Most sources, although acknowledging that there was such an historical figure as Fu Shanxiang, deny that the exams took place or cannot find evidence that she took them.

citing Ono, p.17 and Wang, Rui (2013). The Chinese Imperial Examination System: An Annotated Bibliography. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810887022. pp. 78, 99, and Mao p. 43.

After this was questioned, I

examined Ono, which says that "reliable sources" do not mention an exam for women. Since the other citations, published later, do mention reliable sources, and Ono's original book was published in Japanese in 1978, it seems that more recent scholarship found those sources. Therefor I removed Ono.
Shang Yanliu, cited in Mao, p. 99 is vague: "a popular story about the female top winner ... is fabricated," but doesn't say which story; I suspect it is the story concerning Hong Xiuquan's sister. In fact this quote refers to Fu as "the top winner." So I also removed this reference. See link

I also searched for other reliable sources. A quick Google search in Chinese for 傅善祥 link to search, showed many pages of links to websites, including the online encyclopedias and the Chinese Wikipedia, referring to her as the "First female zhuangyuan," but no usable sources.

Chin/Taiping Rebellion, ironically, also translated by Fogel, Ono's translator, says that Fu took and aced the exams, with no qualifications.
Judith Zeitlin, a specialist in the Qing period, mentions Fu as the first Mao's article in her review of the volume in which it appeared: “the first top graduate of the only set of imperial exams for women held by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom” in 1853 (Fu Shanxiang ).
John Schrecker, Chinese Revolution in Historical Perspective accepts that Fu took the exams. here.
The abstract of an article in Chinese (I can read Chinese but I cannot access the article) says

At least nine pieces of data have been found showing that Imperial Examination was once open to women during Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and Fu Shanxiang,a female Zhuang Yuan,came out of it.It is uncertain whether the recorders of the nine pieces of data conspired to make up the story.A reasonable inference is that the examination open to women was one held by Yang Xiuqing,the then East King,but not a formal Imperial Examination. here

Hope this helps ch (talk) 05:07, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]