List of illustrations -- Maps -- China in the late Qing Dynasty -- Southern Jiangsu province -- Map of Shanghai in 1867 -- Preface -- Female infanticide -- Infanticide in world history -- Infanticide in China -- A subject or a sensibility? -- Female infanticide in nineteenth-century China -- Causes and forms of infanticide -- Buddhism and Daoism in popular morality literature -- Confucianism in popular morality literature -- Popular broadsheets and newspapers -- Official and literati efforts to combat infanticide -- Early official efforts to combat infanticide -- Early Qing literati efforts to assist abandoned children -- Literati foundling hospices -- Confucian arguments against female infanticide -- Nineteenth-century infant protection societies -- Infanticide deniers -- Denial in history -- Protestant missionary infanticide deniers -- Knowledgeable Protestant missionary observers -- The European cult of Chinese children -- Infanticide deniers in Europe -- The holy childhood and the cult of the child -- Creating a foreign island in China -- The Jesuit response to infanticide deniers -- Christian mission efforts to aid foundlings -- Seventeenth-century efforts to save exposed children -- Eighteenth-century Christian foundling hospices -- Catechists and Christian virgins -- Nineteenth-century Catholic efforts -- Female infanticide in modern China -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Notes -- Index -- About the author.