Contents -- Introduction -- I Women and Gender in Imperial China -- Women in Imperial China: Ideal, Stereotype, Reality -- II Dedicated to Christ:Virgins and Confraternities -- Introduction -- Christian Women of China in the Seventeenth Century -- A Necessary Evil: The Contribution of Chinese " Virgins" to the Growth of the Catholic Church in Late Qing China -- Child Bodies, Blessed Bodies: The Contest between Christian Virginity and Confucian Chastity -- Christian Virgins in Early Qing, Sichuan -- III Living the Christian Life -- Introduction -- Models of Female Christians in Early Twentieth- Century China: A Historiographical Study -- Gospel and Gender: Female Christians in Chaozhou, South China -- Women and Christianity in Rural North Henan, 1890- 1912 -- IV Spreading the Faith: Bible Women and Evangelists -- Introduction -- Lady Candida Xu: A Widow between Chinese and Christian Ideals -- Bible Women -- V Healing Women: Doctors and Nurses -- Introduction -- Establishing a Female Medical Elite: The Early History of the Nursing Profession in China -- "To Develop Native Powers": Shi Meiyu and the Danforth Memorial Hospital Nursing School, 1903- 1920 -- VI Educating Women -- Introduction -- "Mothers to Our Country": Conversion, Education, and Ideology among Chinese Protestant Women, 1870- 1930 -- Chinese Nationalism and Christian Womanhood in Early Twentieth-Century China: The Story of Mary Gao ( Gao Meiyu) -- The Advance to Higher Learning: Power, Modernization, and the Beginnings of Women's Education at Canton Christian College -- Women's Education and Social Mobility -- Beyond Missions: Christianity as a Chinese Religion in a Changing China -- Contributors -- Index.