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The women of China

By Cireena Simcox - posted Thursday, 3 April 2008


Their food intake was rationed and doled out by factories or schools, and yet they still cut these meager portions down whenever their country demanded it. Some of them reached adulthood never knowing the feeling of a full belly. Many of these women, like their mothers, were not educated: either because education was considered to be wasted on girls or, later, because education itself became an elitist concept.

Many of them learned instead to march alongside their men, to lay bricks, stoke furnaces, drive trucks, clear rubble by hand, smelt iron and clean out latrines. They also learned that while a woman was entitled to work alongside a man in any task, she could never think as well as a man or reason as well as a man and therefore she was not worth as much as a man. At the same time they learned to efface themselves, to melt into the background, never to court notice or stand out from the crowd.

Thus she learned to fight tooth and claw for the welfare of her family, to go to great lengths to feed and clothes them, but to remember at all times that these skills were her primary value not only to her husband, but to the country. Without them she was worthless.

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To both these generations the modern young Chinese woman is somewhat of an enigma. Like her grandmother, she has learnt that the femininity of a woman can bring much attention but her attractions are not confined to a family courtyard. However, like her mother, she has learned also to efface herself and in any situation that holds the potential for embarrassment or loss of face, she can melt into the background. Thus she doesn’t often appear at a disadvantage.

But unlike of the women who came before her, she has one great advantage. She is educated. Born after the “opening of China” to the West, her influences are not solely Chinese. On the large-screen TV in her lounge she can watch foreign movies. From the computer in her bedroom she can summon the world.

Her mother can reflect on the contrasts in her life: the times of desperate want and privation, followed by the years of struggle to arrive at a life in which, at times, she feels uneasy, faced as she is with things she was once taught to regard as elitist luxuries. But the daughter has known nothing other than to be part of a treasured generation for whom no dreams are unreachable.

While her mother and grandmother were married either in their teens or early 20s, this young woman’s education stretches into her mid-20s. As does her childhood. Her mother’s childhood may have been curtailed around her 12th year and her grandmother’s even earlier: but this young woman, in her Mickey Mouse or Betty Boop T-shirts, toting her Winnie the Pooh handbag, and with diamante butterflies in her hair, doesn’t even need to consider having children until her career is on track in her late 20s or early 30s.

The chasms between these three women might be too deep even to contemplate crossing in some cultures but in China they are bound together with the strong, insoluble grip of “family”: the bond that supercedes all others .Disparate as they may appear, far removed from each others experiences, they continue to offer strength and safety and stability as the unique family bond has done in China for millenia.

They are also bound together in the knowledge that, no matter what careers or jobs they undertake, their main value lies in their contribution to the family and continuance. As long as family stays strong they will survive as they have always done. Wars, politics, the ambitions of men or their obsession with power and glory? The average Chinese woman is not yet too interested. She believes that the half of the sky which she holds up is labeled “family”.

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But what will her daughter think?

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About the Author

Cireena Simcox has been a journalist and columnist for the last 20 years and has written a book titled Finding Margaret Cavendish. She is also an actor and playwright .

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All articles by Cireena Simcox

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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