ABSTRACT
I s A WOMAN made by nature or culture? The question lies at the heart of this study.l Of course, the body is simultaneously part of nature and part of culture. Nevertheless, a woman is born in nature and reborn in culture. In a real sense, her body is transferred from nature to culture by society. And patriarchy as a social system requires man's authority over woman. Thus, within patriarchy, a woman's body 'is situated in the context of a political struggle which seek to regulate human beings within an administered society'. 2 Within patriarchal societies her body is defined as a consequence of the social control which results from social domination - a symptom of man's exploitation of woman - in the seemingly arrogant words of Max Weber, 'because of the normal superiority of the physical and intellectual energies of the male'.3 In the history of China women's exercise is part of an actual and ideological struggle against forms of patriarchal authority, and an attempt to transfer the body to a nonpatriarchal community. This transference in China, as we have seen, was a long drawn-out process.
