Negotiating gentility: The Banana Garden poetry club in seventeenth-century China

The Banana Garden poetry club (Jiaoyuan shishe) in late seventeenth-century Hangzhou serves well as a case study of the social network of negotiations and exchanges involving perceptions of gentility in late imperial China. The club was one of the fi rst public literary societies founded by a woman and for women.1

The Banana Garden poets were all gentry women (guixiu), ruling-class ladies or ‘gentlewomen’ from élite families whose fathers, brothers and husbands were higher degree holders, well-known poets, and scholar-offi cials. Their mothers and sisters also counted many highly educated gentlewomen, female teachers, reputable poets and painters among their number.