Excerpted from my senior honors thesis, footnotes removed.
Early life  Qiu Jin was born into a scholarly family in Chejiang
Province, probably in 1877 or 1875. Her family name, Qiu, means
"autumn;" her personal name means "jade."Her parents ensured
that she received an excellent literary education, even though
she was a girl. Supposedly, her mother gave up trying to teach
her the traditional arts of sewing and embroidery, because Qiu
Jin vastly preferred practicing archery and reading martial arts
novels.  When Qiu Jin was eighteen years old, she acquiesced to
an arranged marriage. Her husband, Wang, moved them to the
capital, Beijing, when he was appointed Circuit Commissioner. It
was a strange time to live in the great city.  Beijing, the
center of the storm  Beijing was the hub of activity for the
country, but the politics were distressed and chaotic. There
were the rumors of the Empress Dowager's embezzling, the
humiliation of the losing war with upstart Japan (1894-1895)—all
on the heels of the Taiping