Down the Alleyway: Courtyard Tenements and Women’s Networks in Early Twentieth-Century Beijing

This article examines the formation and operation of lower class women’s social network in the ghettoized courtyard neighborhood in early twentieth-century Beijing. Drawing evidence from criminal case files, the author argues that courtyard tenements provided a gendered urban space within which women formed, extended, and maintained a flexible and dynamic web of durable relationships. Motivated largely by individual circumstances and objectives, this neighborhood network remained personalized, individualized, and “ego-centered.” The network neither came into existence for any type of political movements nor did it entail wider female solidarity, but the physical geography of the courtyard tenements and the development of these neighborhood networks offered lower class women some immediate protections and buffers when they were under emotional, domestic, or economic crisis. This article argues that these interpersonal relationships forged within a complex urban space were an important resource to enable women to rise out of the intense state control and economic turmoil in the tumultuous decades of reform and revolution.