“What Hangs on a Hairpin” officially published on Ming Studies

I am delighted to share the good news that my article titled “What hangs on a Hairpin” was officially published on Ming Studies in September.

The article compares Jiang Fang’s “Huo Xiaoyu’s story” with Tang Xianzu’s The Purple Hairpins , with a focus on the materiality and symbolic meanings of the hairpins in the two stories. The article contrasts the two stories’ different takes on the circulation of hairpin to illuminate the ideas of inalienable possession and language exchange in two different narratives on women and romance.

Please read it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0147037X.2021.1896866