Practicality, Solidarity, and Female Intimate Bonds: Self-Crafting via Collective in Shanghai Working Women’s War Zone Service Corp, 1937–40

The War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression saw the Shanghai Working Women’s War Zone Service Corps, led by Hu Lanqi, play a crucial role in carrying out tasks for the Eighteenth Army, including medical and relief service, mass mobilisation, and others. Operating across eight provinces from 1937 to 1940, the Corps demonstrated a pragmatic work style, exceptional solidarity, and organisational rigour. As one of the earliest and most enduring women’s service corps, what bonds held its members together, apart from their shared resistance sentiment and military discipline? How did these bonds influence their self-fashioning when working as a collective?

Instead of situating them within a male-female dichotomy and “gender neutrality” analytical framework, this study delves into the interpersonal relationships within the Corps and their interactions with the rural populations, drawing insights from their wartime accounts, autobiographies, and memoirs. I argue that these women service soldiers, driven by a shared sense of pioneering awareness and intimate bonds akin to mother-daughter and sisterly ties, crafted themselves into physical and emotional labour providers characterised by a high degree of “chiku” (eating bitterness, or the endurance of hardship).

This study deepens Nicole Barnes’ discussion on “intimate communities” enhanced by wartime nurses and Emily Honig’s discussion on “Sisterhoods” among women workers by highlighting the significance of female ties in self-government, group cohesion, and the formation of emotional refuge. Within the Corps, mother-daughter ties between Hu and the younger generation and sibling ties met their emotional needs and optimised the individuals’ service work via mutual care, supervision, and criticism. While interacting with rural women, they consciously and repeatedly practised female roles, such as daughters, cousins, and sisters, within existing Confucian kinship ethics and family structures. These roles’ gendered behaviour and morality became integral to their experiences and maintained the continuity of their self-crafting.