been doing. The boy is beaten until he is covered with blood. The hair is torn from his head and he is cast out of the house. He takes a horse whip to Gold Lotus and brings it down on her. She manages to lie convincingly, and her maid supports her story. He spares her and Gold Lotus goes to an old wise woman herbalist for help, who sends her to an astrologer. She gives his spells to her husband.
Two days later Gold Lotus and Hsi Men were on the best of terms and enjoying themselves like little fishes in the water. But, worthy reader, it is not without reason that a married man is warned against letting his wife have secret dealings with … Tao priests and soothsayers, with nurses and matchmakers. A good old proverb runs,
Let not your guests behold your wife,
And secretly lock the postern gate.
Restrict her to courtyard and garden;
So intrigue and misfortune will pass you by.
From Chin P’ing Mei, The Adventurous History of Hsi Men and his Six Wives. Written c. 1650 and published in seventeenth-century China, it was banned in the eighteenth century as immoral. Though the law was not changed until 1912 Chin P’ing Mei was very popular and circulated illegally.
How sad it is to be a woman,
Nothing on earth is held so cheap.
Boys stand leaning at the door
Like Gods fallen out of heavens.
Their hearts brace the Four Oceans,
The wind and dust of a thousand miles.
No one is glad when a girl is born,
By her the family sets no store.
Fu Hsuan
Our husbands regard us as some sort of dogs who keep the house. We even despise ourselves.
Chinese peasant women
These well-groomed heroines carry five-foot rifles,
On this parade ground in the first rays of the sun.
Daughters of China have uncommon aspirations,
Preferring battle tunics to red dresses.
Mao Tse-tung, inscription on a photograph of a women’s militia
WOMAN’S ASSESSOR : Was it because you had different opinions that you fought with your wife?
MAN : No. But because in the past before liberation, I often saw my father beat my mother and I was brought up to think that men should be superior.
JUDGE : When did your father beat your mother?
MAN : In the old society.
JUDGE : And what does the present law say?
MAN : That men and women are equal. But I still think the wife should obey the husband.
JUDGE : But don’t you know the law?
MAN : I don’t think it matters if a man beats his wife – but he mustn’t beat others. In the family it’s all right.
JUDGE : What law allows the husband to beat the wife?
MAN : No law.
Felix Greene, A Divorce Trial in China , 1960
We apprehended long ago that the women of Asia cannot exact sympathy from the imperialists in their fight to liberate themselves.… You have but to witness how the imperialists treat women in their own countries.
Mme Sun Yat-sen
On 14 November 1919 Miss Chao Wu-chieh of Nanyung Street, Changsha, took out a dagger, and, as she was being raised in the bridal chair, slit her throat. Such an event might never have been elevated into history. The suicide of a woman in China was far from unusual. But Miss Chao’s suicide became the subject of at least nine impassioned articles by Mao Tse-tung. The event symbolized at once the centuries of hopeless female subordination – the extreme act of suicide was the only way Miss Chao could avoid her arranged marriage – and the critical forces which were being brought to bear on traditional Chinese society.
In order to understand the significance of changes brought by the revolution the nature and degree of degradation and domination which previously existed have to be remembered. While a small minority of the upper classes lived as aesthetic ornaments, most of the women worked ceaselessly and could be beaten and even killed with no hope of redress. Bride-price and wife-selling were normal; so too were polygamy and concubinage. Girls were sold or kidnapped into prostitution. Child streetwalkers could frequently be seen in the larger towns. Within the family the older women
Two days later Gold Lotus and Hsi Men were on the best of terms and enjoying themselves like little fishes in the water. But, worthy reader, it is not without reason that a married man is warned against letting his wife have secret dealings with … Tao priests and soothsayers, with nurses and matchmakers. A good old proverb runs,
Let not your guests behold your wife,
And secretly lock the postern gate.
Restrict her to courtyard and garden;
So intrigue and misfortune will pass you by.
From Chin P’ing Mei, The Adventurous History of Hsi Men and his Six Wives. Written c. 1650 and published in seventeenth-century China, it was banned in the eighteenth century as immoral. Though the law was not changed until 1912 Chin P’ing Mei was very popular and circulated illegally.
How sad it is to be a woman,
Nothing on earth is held so cheap.
Boys stand leaning at the door
Like Gods fallen out of heavens.
Their hearts brace the Four Oceans,
The wind and dust of a thousand miles.
No one is glad when a girl is born,
By her the family sets no store.
Fu Hsuan
Our husbands regard us as some sort of dogs who keep the house. We even despise ourselves.
Chinese peasant women
These well-groomed heroines carry five-foot rifles,
On this parade ground in the first rays of the sun.
Daughters of China have uncommon aspirations,
Preferring battle tunics to red dresses.
Mao Tse-tung, inscription on a photograph of a women’s militia
WOMAN’S ASSESSOR : Was it because you had different opinions that you fought with your wife?
MAN : No. But because in the past before liberation, I often saw my father beat my mother and I was brought up to think that men should be superior.
JUDGE : When did your father beat your mother?
MAN : In the old society.
JUDGE : And what does the present law say?
MAN : That men and women are equal. But I still think the wife should obey the husband.
JUDGE : But don’t you know the law?
MAN : I don’t think it matters if a man beats his wife – but he mustn’t beat others. In the family it’s all right.
JUDGE : What law allows the husband to beat the wife?
MAN : No law.
Felix Greene, A Divorce Trial in China , 1960
We apprehended long ago that the women of Asia cannot exact sympathy from the imperialists in their fight to liberate themselves.… You have but to witness how the imperialists treat women in their own countries.
Mme Sun Yat-sen
On 14 November 1919 Miss Chao Wu-chieh of Nanyung Street, Changsha, took out a dagger, and, as she was being raised in the bridal chair, slit her throat. Such an event might never have been elevated into history. The suicide of a woman in China was far from unusual. But Miss Chao’s suicide became the subject of at least nine impassioned articles by Mao Tse-tung. The event symbolized at once the centuries of hopeless female subordination – the extreme act of suicide was the only way Miss Chao could avoid her arranged marriage – and the critical forces which were being brought to bear on traditional Chinese society.
In order to understand the significance of changes brought by the revolution the nature and degree of degradation and domination which previously existed have to be remembered. While a small minority of the upper classes lived as aesthetic ornaments, most of the women worked ceaselessly and could be beaten and even killed with no hope of redress. Bride-price and wife-selling were normal; so too were polygamy and concubinage. Girls were sold or kidnapped into prostitution. Child streetwalkers could frequently be seen in the larger towns. Within the family the older women
Similar Books
