In "Crossing the Gate," Man Xu examines the lives of women in the Chinese province of Fujian during the Song dynasty. Tracking women s life experience across class lines, outside as well as inside the domestic realm, Xu challenges the accepted wisdom about women and gender roles in medieval China. She contextualizes women in a much broader physical space and social network, investigating the gaps between ideals and reality and examining women s own agency in gender construction. She argues that women s autonomy and mobility, conventionally attributed to Ming-Qing women of late imperial China, can be traced to the Song era. This thorough study of Song women s life experience connects women to the great political, economic, and social transitions of the time, and sheds light on the so-called Song-Yuan-Ming transition from the perspective of gender studies. By putting women at the center of analysis and by focusing on the local and the quotidian, "Crossing the Gate" offers a new and nuanced picture of the Song Confucian revival."