The Chaste Widow of the Shanghai Racetrack
The Chaste Widow’s Monument, an 18th century memorial arch on the old racecourse, was a legacy of Shanghai before the foreigners came, a bow to an ancient Confucian virtue that stood stubbornly on the racecourse infield until the 1950s. Restored in the 1940s by shipping tycoon and Shanghailander Eric Moller, it was one of the last pailous in the city to be taken down.
So who was this chaste widow? We know very little. She’s identified only by her surname, Zhao 赵—women often didn’t get names–the faithful widow of Lu Zhaojia 陆肇嘉. Chastity in women was a prized virtue (patriarchal society, don’t you know) and chaste widowhood was practically a cult. For centuries, women who honored their dead husbands by remaining chaste received imperial recognition; witnesses to her unblemished life would make applications to Peking. And that’s how it came to be that Lu Zhaojia’s nameless, blameless window was honored with this arch in a remote Shanghai County village in the 8th year of Emperor Qianlong’s rule – 1744.
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