TO avoid being raped by her employer, a woman in Wuhan, the capital of Central China's Hubei Province, jumped from a three-storey building and suffered serious injuries.

But her brave action didn't earn the respect of many people because, generally speaking, it was felt a woman has other ways to fight off a man who is not threatening her with a weapon.

So, the question seems to be: Is it "worthy" today for a woman to go to such extremes as jumping off a building to preserve her virtue?

A recent survey by Xinhuanet said stories about "lie nu" ("A woman ready to die to preserve her chastity") were not favoured by most of the women surveyed. Women also blamed the media for the "hype" put into stories about women who commit suicide to avoid rape.

"We sympathize with these women a lot, but the newspapers seemingly tell us that every woman should preserve their chastity even at the cost of her life or the risk of serious injury," said one of the women taking part in the survey.

"It is not urgent to warn women by such stories, full of blood and tears, though it does happen."

The survey concluded that such an extreme concept about women preserving their chastity was no longer popular or relevant in modern society.

But in ancient society - or up to the 20th century - a chaste woman was a role model for everyone.

Apart from poverty-stricken families in those days, most women used to read a book entitled, "Stories of Chaste Women" ("Lie Nu Zhuan") before their marriages. The book, written by Liu Xiang during the Han Dynasty (206 BC - AD 220), collected many stories about chaste women. Reading the book was "a must", especially in families with a high social status.

But reading the book today, most people would find the stories hard to believe.

In the book, a widow cuts off her hand because it had been touched by a strange man at a time when, according to tradition, a woman could not be touched, or even seen, by strange men.

In another story a princess stays in her room even though it is on fire because she was not allowed to go out unchaperoned. So, she burned to death.

Other stories tell of women committing suicide by cutting their throats, by hanging themselves or by drowning in rivers. They were all praised highly because they had valued their chastity more than their lives.

According to ancient tradition, a man could marry several times but a woman could never marry more than once or she would be thought of as a woman of loose morals.

So, in Chinese history, there are many stories about women whose husbands died young and who never married again. In most cases, they did it not out of deep love or real mourning, but for their fame and reputation.

A history archive of a county in Qing Dynasty (AD 1644-1911) recorded a story of a young 19-year-old woman named Huang Xuehui who was engaged to a man named Zhu. But Zhu died before the marriage and Huang's parents suggested that she consider marrying another man. But she decided not to marry and committed suicide when she was 24.

No one today would believe that a woman who had never even seen her husband could have a deep love for him. Huang's action was, of course, not done for love - the story was recorded in the county's history and it bestowed high honour on the family.

Another story may sound too far-fetched even to be imagined. A woman had the same luck as Huang: her husband-to-be also died. But the two families still held a wedding ceremony for them. The "bride" held the mourning board of the "husband's" death and they were "married" in the wedding hall.

The county Hui in today's Anhui Province, produced more than 2,200 chaste women who became vestal virgins or who committed suicide for the sake of their chastity during the 267 years of the Qing Dynasty.

Such women may look ridiculous today but in their society, they were highly commended. They and their families would be honoured by neighbours. The government would have high stone archs built in their honour so people could show their respect for these women generation after generation.

However, the reality for thousands of years was that the core power structure of Chinese families was in the authority of the husband and father. The famous saying, "San Cong Si De" ("Three obediences and four morals") instructed women to obey masculine authority. Before marriage, they should obey the father. After marriage, they should obey the husband. If the husband died, they still couldn't have the final say because they had to obey the son - the man was the sole authority in the family.

How should women show respect for this authority? The best way, of course, was to keep their chastity under the sole ownership of the husband.

For a long time Chinese culture advocated strict control over desires.

Some writers of love or sex stories in the Qing Dynasty were put into prison and fined. Young women with good family background were not allowed to read love stories in case the stories lowered their moral standards.

Such strict regulation collapses thoroughly today. Scarcely any women follow such traditions. At least, they would not commit suicide or refuse to marry just to preserve their virtue.