Last words

I take it as a sign from the powers that be that my hair dryer dies on my last day here. Really time to call it quits and go home. It's really weird. Until two days ago it hadn't sunk in that I'm actually leaving. Wow. So that's it.

As I walked across campus today it struck me how I don't feel any different in relation to my surroundings than I did a year ago. I still stick out. I still don't fit in. To those people who look at me it makes no difference whether I just fell off a plane yesterday and am completely clueless about China or whether I have lived here for a year. I am still the stranger, the Laowai, will always be. I'm still totally helpless in dealing with bureaucrats, even though I manage to get a hair cut all by myself. Still, it feels like not much has changed. China is quite impenetrable.

So, before I go and ponder some more whether to pack another box to ship home or pay about ten times as much when they get to me for over-weight luggage tomorrow, let me post something I wrote for my Tostan application (I had never before applied for a job that required a writing sample and something told me they wouldn't want my last paper on string cosmology). I have to say, when I wrote this little piece I felt a bit more optimistic about China's future than I do at the moment, but without further ado, here we go...

What is the status of women in China? This was one of the first questions friends asked me after I had moved to China. Almost one year later, I still have not found a good answer. The best I can do is to sketch the pictures of a few women I met on the background of what I learned about Chinese history and tradition.

Traditional Chinese culture rests on three main pillars. Confucianism, which emphasizes obedience (to the state, superiors in general, fathers and husband in particular) above all other virtues, places women on the lowest rung of society. Their education is not desirable, they should only excel in household duties. Taoism, a religion that focuses on balance and harmony of the yin (dark) and yang (light) and therefore does not encourage any excess in either direction, associates female with yin (dark) and male with yang (light) – the good and strong. This does not go as far as Christianity in calling women seductresses and responsible for the original sin, but it also paints them as the weaker, more passive gender. Finally, Buddhism, like most organized religions, does not allow women to ascend to priesthood and remains a male dominated sphere.

Starting from these premises, it is not surprising that women rights in China were in an abysmal state at the end of the Qing dynasty, about a hundred years ago, when China entered the “modern era.” Confined to their courtyard homes, only able to go out in the company of their parents, and having their feet bound starting at the age of six, even girls from modestly wealthy families lived a life of seclusion and virtually without freedom of choice. After their arranged marriages they entered the home of their new husband and were henceforth subordinate to their mothers-in-law. Lin Yu Tang portrays life in families around the turn of the century quite vividly in his novels. The female ideal had changed from rather plump women in the Tang dynasty (like the most famous concubine Yang Gui Fei) to fragile, frail girls with “feet like lotus blossoms.” According to “China: A new history” by Fairbank and Goldman (Harvard University Press), even countryside women were under pressure to adhere to this beauty ideal and with farmer's wives having their feet bound, they were not able to work in the fields, which led to an increased poverty in the countryside. Talking to Chinese, however, I got the impression that foot binding was only a fashion among the very rich. Things changed after the fall of the monarchy, the establishment of the Republic and subsequently the People's Republic of China. One of the first laws the communist party imposed was to forbid foot binding. Officially, women and men are equal under the constitution.

I believe, socialism has done more for the promotion of women's rights than to impede them, not out of a humanitarian ideal, but simply out of the necessity to have a large work force. Take East Germany, an example I am familiar with because I spent my childhood “behind the iron curtain.” After the turmoil that followed World War II, women in West Germany returned to the ideal of being a housewife and mother, whereas women in the East were not only encouraged to have jobs, unemployed women were actually rather frowned upon (there was officially no unemployment in GDR). I remember when we were asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?” in Grade School, we were not only presented with teachers or nurses as role models, but just as well crane operators or doctors. Now, in reality, women still got paid less than men for the same work and in many families the burden of housework was still on the woman's shoulders – two realities that are true even more so in today's China, where women still wait on men when it comes to cooking food or washing their clothes. The East German system did take active steps to keep women employed – free day-care was available for all children above the age of three, and one was guaranteed to be able to return to one's work place after maternity leave. Another striking contrast to West Germany is the fact that East Germany had much more liberal abortion laws. I think as a result of all these factors, women in East-Germany had a stronger sense of independence and self-worth. Even without a feminism movement as that in the West, the typical female/male roles were no longer applicable.

So how does this apply to China – a socialist country founded on Confucian ideals? It is easy to look at the numbers – the government is led mostly by old men, the top 100 companies are almost exclusively run by men, women earn less for the same job, and the birth of a boy is still more desirable than that of a girl. However, statistics also show that more than 50% of newly enrolled university students are female and the “Gaokao” (Chinese college entrance examination, which is held nationwide) consistently sees girls with the top score. Women are also represented in a large variety of fields – from bus drivers to doctors, from sales personnel to university professors. From my personal experience it seems that women are used to working, simply being housewife and mother is not the most common goal. Chinese parents put so much emphasis on education – especially for their only child, no matter whether it is a boy or girl - this education cannot just be wasted, can it?

Another strange consequence of the one-child policy established in 1980 is that the “after 80 generation,” as they are called, is dis-proportionally male. This is probably due to prenatal diagnostic and selective abortion, but also to the fact that a family whose first child was a girl is more likely to face the penalty (either pay a fine or lose promotions/job opportunities) following the birth of a second – hopefully a son. Ironically, this makes it very hard for these precious sons to find a suitable marriage partner. In addition to the fact that there are 108 boys born for every 100 girls, city women are also better educated and it is difficult for a man to find a partner with lower, or at best comparable, education and income level (of course, the situation is different in rural areas, where girls often only complete middle school – higher education is not free anymore). Still, maybe because of the high “marriage pressure” (I was told a girl is not supposed to have a boyfriend before she is eighteen, but if she is not married by 25 she is considered an old spinster, whereas it is normal for men to marry late), Chinese girls pay extreme attention to their appearance – the gap to their mothers' generation, who grew up during the cultural revolution, when anything bourgeois such as make-up was banished, is strikingly apparent. The new beauty ideal can be summarized as “skinny and white,” tanning is absolutely out of the question. This goes as far as carrying a parasol at all times or using “whitening” body lotion. Fashion is a major topic and “shopping” is past time number one. Does this mean these girls are giving up some of the progress, the abandoning of traditional female roles their mothers had achieved, for the sake of being fashionable and popular? A question one might ask not only about China...

Fortunately, this is not all there is to Chinese girls. The female physics students I met are very determined and much more mature than their male peers. They have a good understanding of their current position and their future goals. Furthermore, I was surprised to discover there is a still small but growing number of very independent-minded young women in China, who live neither by their parents' ideas nor follow any fashion trends, but choose their career, lifestyle and boyfriends – even go as far as living together with them before marriage. They travel as backpackers through China and Southeast Asia, practice yoga and are interested in re-discovering ancient Chinese traditions, such as Taoism or Buddhism. I was fortunate enough to become good friends with one such an amazing woman – Liu Xing – who does not only devote her vacation time to teach Chinese to school children in Thailand, but is also involved in an organization helping Chinese children from rural areas to stay in school. Her volunteer work involves traveling to remote places and checking first-hand on the living conditions of children who apply for subsidy. In the incomprehensible mess of today's China she is struggling to find herself and help others – it is women like her who make me feel inspired and hopeful, for China's future in general and that of women in particular.