A Study of Women’s Religion, Life, and Agency through Guanyin Hairpins in Ming Dynasty China

Abstract

Hairpins decorated with motifs related to Guanyin, the most popular bodhisattva in Chinese culture, emerged as a new type of head accessory during China’s Ming dynasty (1368–1644). These hairpins have been found in tombs as burial objects and in pagodas as religious offerings. Records of their use have been captured in novels, travel notes, confiscatory inventories, burial arrangements, and ancestral portraits. Guanyin hairpins were used flexibly between religious and everyday domains, being both women’s accessories and a popular deity. They allow for an exploration of how women’s agency dynamically defined the functions of Guanyin hairpins in terms of aesthetic taste, self-appreciation, and religious practices. This diversity of uses further reveals that women not only relied on Guanyin for religious comfort, as current scholarship has established, but also as an expression of taste and appreciation, as reflected in how Guanyin was linked to women’s life and identity in Ming China.

Keywords: :

• Guanyin
• hairpins
• gender
• agency
• the Ming dynasty

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful for the assistance from Professor Ann Waltner, Professor Liping Wang, Professor Minku Kim, and Professor Yuhang Li for considerable feedback, inspiring thoughts, and sharing of sources while writing this article. I also deeply appreciate the help from staffs of the Wujin Museum and the Cultural Relics Press for processing the permissions of images for publication.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hui-Han Jin

Hui-Han Jin holds two PhD degrees in Chinese history and archaeology from the University of Minnesota (Twin Cites) and Peking University. She specialized in burial practices in Chinese history and is now an Assistant Professor affiliated to the Department of History at National Dong Hwa University in Hualien, Taiwan, R.O.C.

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