Asian Descent Archives - Page 3 of 70

For twenty years, men and women competed together in skeet shooting at the Olympics. But after Zhang Shan won the gold in 1992, the International Shooting Union suddenly felt it necessary to prevent women from shooting against the men, with a separate women’s event established for the 2000 Olympics.

Senbon Matsubara warriors

DNA tests on 105 sets of human remains from the Battle of Senbon Matsubara in 1580 showed that 35—exactly one-third—of these Japanese warriors were female.

Phum Snay warriors

Several women were buried in Phum Snay, Cambodia with metal swords and helmets between the 1st and 5th centuries CE, discovered in 2007.

Jang Gye-hyang

The oldest extant Korean cookbook, written circa 1670 by Lady Jang Gye-hyang, was passed down through generations of her descendants without it ever occurring to any of them that this held more significance than a family recipe book.

Li Qingzhao

Song dynasty poet Li Qingzhao wrote in depth about how much she loved alcohol, which was widely deemed inappropriate for a woman, as was the fact that she dared to divorce a man who mistreated her.

Lu Wenyu

Chinese architect

Fang

Fang, who lived during the first century BCE, was the earliest recorded woman alchemist in China. She reputedly discovered a way to turn mercury into silver—one interpretation is that she used a chemical technique to extract silver from ores using mercury.