![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/ffe31769-2b4c-428f-97e2-687f8ff3bcd3/967bc54f-0b7e-4e29-bf7c-9403efe7dbc0_rw_1920.jpg?h=b059da45fd4993241151002956563c55)
Early-twentieth-century China witnessed a surge of invented or reformulated terms and concepts that reinterpreted long-standing gender norms or principles in various ways. The differentiation between “he” and “she” in Chinese had appeared early in 1870s. The imperative to invent a Chinese equivalent to the female pronoun “she” in English was facilitated by the intensified language and cultural interactions between China and the West from the late nineteenth century onwards.