Why China Is Requiring Ninth Graders to Read ‘Jane Eyre’

Why China Is Requiring Ninth Graders to Read ‘Jane Eyre’ - The New York Times

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Asia Pacific|What China Sees in ‘Jane Eyre,’ Now Required Reading for Ninth Graders

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/28/world/asia/china-jane-eyre-required-reading-literature.html

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What China Sees in ‘Jane Eyre,’ Now Required Reading for Ninth Graders

The Victorian heroine has long been celebrated in China for her independence and insistence on equality.

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!A woman stands reading an open book inside a colorful bookstore.

*A woman reads at a bookstore in Beijing in August. “Jane Eyre” has found generations of readers in China since it was first translated into Chinese a century ago.Credit...Zhu Zhenqiang/VCG, via Getty Images*

By Yan Zhuang and Li You

Sept. 28, 2026, 1:58 a.m. ET

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Nearly two centuries after “Jane Eyre” first defied the conventions of Victorian England, China is requiring a new generation of teenagers to read her story.

The British classic has long been popular in China and was already recommended reading for schoolchildren. But this fall, ninth-grade students across the country are being required to read the novel in full, according to Chinese state media. One report in an official newspaper held it up as an anti-materialistic love story that young people could learn from.

The book, in which the young orphan Jane Eyre works as a governess in the household of the wealthy but elusive Mr. Rochester, is widely celebrated in China for its themes of independence and equality between women and men.

A Chinese translation appeared as early as 1925, and there have since been numerous translations and adaptations for stage and screen. A British film adaptation was shown in Chinese theaters in 1979, just a few years after the end of the Cultural Revolution, as China was reopening to foreign culture.

Ping Zhu, a literature professor at the University of California, San Diego, who researches Chinese feminism and literature, said the novel is compatible with the Chinese government’s vision of women’s equality — one that can coexist with traditional gender roles and the heterosexual nuclear family. Its inclusion in the ninth grade textbook comes as China struggles with population decline and the government encourages young people to marry and have children, she said.

“‘Jane Eyre’ is about an independent woman, but she’s not too outrageous in her challenge of patriarchal power,” Ms. Zhu said. By the end of the novel, Jane has married Mr. Rochester and had a child. “All these things are what the Chinese government wants the younger generation to do,” Ms. Zhu said.

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