Leftover in China

by Roseann Lake

  Behind India is a host of other heavily populated South Asian, Middle Eastern, and African countries, where women are just starting to get a bit more autonomy over their lives and bodies. Women in Bangladesh are being sent to school in higher numbers because they’ve become an important source of talent in the country’s factories, which require skilled labor. Women in Pakistan are racing motorbikes to promote gender equality. Women in Afghanistan are riding skateboards to do the same, because they’re still not allowed to ride bikes. Women in Iran are training in karate and martial arts to protect themselves against gender-based violence. Women in Egypt are taking to the streets in wedding gowns to protest marriage by a certain age. Women in Malawi are helping one another escape child marriage. Women in Saudi Arabia just gained the right to drive. However small, these are all signs that women around the world are standing up against the people or traditions that prohibit them from being fully participating members of society. Although these are not the same women who are rallying in marches around the world—none of the aforementioned countries, with the exception of India, Malawi, and Saudi Arabia, even had a Women’s March—their small victories must be nourished, because they need them most.

  I wrote much of this last chapter on a trip through Africa, which ended in Mozambique. While there, I met a young Mozambican entrepreneur of Portuguese descent who has developed a line of inexpensive, reusable feminine napkins, which are of significant value in a country where most women still rely on leaves, sticks, or shreds of capulanas—rags, essentially—to absorb blood during their periods. The initial idea was to employ Mozambican women to promote and sell this product at local markets, although it quickly became clear that this was unwise. Women in Mozambique have such little purchasing power, that despite being the end users of the product, they were not the ones making the decision on whether or not to buy it. Husbands (or fathers) were the ones who needed to first be convinced of the sanitary benefits of reusable pads; a sales pitch that most women in Mozambique—where menstruation remains highly stigmatized—were loath to make. The founder of the company decided that she needed to recenter her marketing efforts on universities—where female students might have a bit of disposable income—and on mosques, where, if convinced of the cost-saving benefits of these pads, an imam might buy a bundle for his wives.

  On many levels, Mozambique provided me with a fresh lens through which to see China, which has invested heavily across Africa, but in Mozambique, in particular. The country’s main airport was built by the Chinese, as was the city’s largest hotel. The skeleton of the longest suspension bridge in Africa—which will connect Maputo, the capital, with the town of Catembe—is already visible from the shoreline. Funded by the Export-Import Bank of China, built with China’s Angang Steel, and developed by China Roads and Bridges Corporation, it is expected to replace the poor network of roads currently used to transport goods and tourists between Mozambique, South Africa, and Swaziland.

  Beyond investments, however, it was fascinating to learn that Mozambique has the twelfth highest fertility rate in the world—5.26 per woman. It is located in a part of the globe where in stark contrast to most of Asia, the population is expected to double by 2050. Infant and maternal mortality rates are high and female education rates are low. The average life expectancy is forty-nine, which often means that when parents die, their eldest children have to drop out of school and find a job to support their siblings, thereby limiting their opportunities to become educated and build better lives for themselves. Although women in sub-Saharan Africa already contribute to 39 percent of GDP, they are also responsible for an overwhelmingly large share of domestic work, and child marriage and young motherhood complicate their efforts to find more lucrative jobs. They are at the tail end of the development spectrum that China currently straddles, but over time, as they gain greater access to education and more autonomy over their marital and reproductive choices, that should change.

  Already, signs of that change are emerging. In China, one of the most telling indicators of the progress that women have made over the last thirty-odd years is the fact that the lives of women in their twenties and thirties are very different from those of their mothers and grandmothers. While that isn’t yet true in Mozambique, it’s starting to be. While there, I visited my friend Sigrid, who was formerly working in China, and had just taken up a new posting as a diplomat in Maputo. The daughter of diplomats, she had grown up in Mozambique, with a housekeeper who had worked for her parents for over a decade. When the housekeeper—whom Sigrid was very fond of—passed away, her eldest daughter, Cresencia, had to help provide for her younger sister. She’s now employed by Sigrid as a housekeeper, tending to the exact same chores as her mother did when she worked for Sigrid’s family—in the same high-rise apartment building overlooking the ocean that Sigrid grew up in, and chose to move back into as an adult.

  Like her mother, Cresencia is a single mother, with the additional responsibility of a sibling to look after. History could easily repeat itself and she could work as a housekeeper until her final days, except that she’s resumed classes at the local university and is studying to be an accountant. Her little sister is studying international relations. They are able to fund their studies thanks to Sigrid’s parents, who are footing some of the bills—a luxury that not all people have in Mozambique, of course—but to see the sisters both so enthusiastic about going to school leaves hope that they’ll achieve a different life for themselves, if that’s what they desire.

  Although the access that women in Mozambique gain to higher education will not be as comprehensive or of the quality that it has been for Chinese women, it’s important that a transition has begun.

  While China is an extreme example of how quickly things can change, the speed of its transition has not come without a cost. The country’s oppressive pollution is not to be taken lightly and is already beginning to cause severe health issues. It continues to have a dubious human-rights record; freedom of the press (or of speech) is a slippery slope; socioeconomic inequality is growing, despite an overall reduction in poverty; territorial disputes and tensions between Han Chinese and ethnic minorities often lead to violent conflict; and government corruption remains rampant, even after serious crackdowns under President Xi Jinping. In addition to the inequalities mentioned earlier, women earn less than their male counterparts, spend more time on unpaid work, are frightfully underrepresented in roles of political leadership—something that regrettably shows little signs of changing—and are just starting to get a bit of legal recourse when it comes to domestic and sexual violence.

  Still, I am rooting for China. I believe in its women, I have faith in its men, and most of the time—when I feel like I can get a reasonably accurate reading of the tea leaves—I am not distrusting of the government’s stated goals. But more than anything, I believe that China desperately wants to reach the next level of development. It wants to build better cities, generate cleaner air, and improve its public service. It knows that it has to ensure more inclusive growth, especially with regards to its “leftover men,” who have traditionally found employment in heavy industry and manufacturing, much like their disillusioned US counterparts who overwhelmingly helped elect a populist president. It longs to become internationally recognized for the quality of its education, the power of its technology, and the value of its advances in health care. It wants to play on a more sophisticated field and show the world that it is a creator, not an imitator. And it can.

  Yet, as is true for almost all countries, if China continues to cling to its established gender roles and allows tradition to trump the professional and economic potential of its young women, it will stagnate. High-achieving Chinese women will seek out more open-minded foreign husbands. Instead of returning to China after studying abroad (which many female Chinese students do to be closer to their parents), they will more doggedly pursue work opportunities away from home and become part of the Chinese diaspora. Contributing to a significant drain on the dome
stic talent pool, they will cause China to lose the valuable ground it has gained on the path to becoming a more civil and truly developed society.

  Ultimately, the stories of China’s leftovers are a mosaic depicting the lives of women from around the globe, a flagrant reminder that even in the world’s most developed nations, there still exists a pathological scrutiny of women who are not wed by a certain age. Domestically, these women are the single most powerful force ushering China into a new future, but in larger terms, they are the protagonists of a global narrative starring ambitious young women with revised timetables and expectations for their early adult years and relationships. They hold the keys to balancing economies and reducing poverty, infant mortality, domestic violence, and hunger—all proven to decrease when women have greater control over their careers, finances, and fertility. Neglecting the very generous returns on these three foundational freedoms and failing to recognize the promise and the transformative value of women seeking out more fulfilling lives, careers, and partnerships puts any country at perilous risk of being not only leftover, but left behind.

  * It should be noted that this figure also includes single-parent, often less affluent, households in which mothers are the only breadwinners.

  EPILOGUE

  NEW BEGINNINGS TO HAPPY ENDINGS

  Something was in the air. I caught up with Yanyan one afternoon at 798, Beijing’s trendy art district. She’d gotten new hair extensions and bumped up her kitten heels to a full three inches. “I am meeting an old classmate this evening,” she told me. “I haven’t seen him in sixteen years!”

  Fast-forward three months, and I’m sitting in the living room of their apartment. As they welcome me, Yanyan’s soon-to-be husband, Li Ming, whom I’ve just met for the first time, offers me a glass of orange juice and some sweets. It’s not yet four p.m. on a brisk November afternoon, and shortly after I arrive, he changes into a fleecy pair of navy-blue pajamas with bright yellow moons and stars all over them. I start to wonder if everyone in Yanyan’s family has a thing for microfleece, as these look suspiciously like the pajamas Baby Swiffer would always be dressed in. Li Ming looks inquisitively at Yanyan, and asks, “You won’t change?” She giggles, and tells him that she’ll change later.

  Over a meal prepared by Yanyan that includes my absolute favorite dish, gan bian dou jiao—spicy fried green beans—the pair tells me all about how they reconnected. In high school, Li Ming had a crush on Yanyan’s best friend. He asked Yanyan to give her friend a note he’d written for her—a small declaration of his feelings—and Yanyan dutifully complied. The friend wasn’t very impressed, but Yanyan always had a soft spot for Li Ming, especially after having witnessed this kind gesture.

  Three weeks after their first date, he proposed to her on a small piece of paper. “Finally, I wrote to the right girl!” he says, laughing.

  After dinner, they take me on a tour of their apartment, which they’ve purchased from a relative and have since been working hard to renovate. It’s filled with ready-to-hang wedding photos featuring the classically outlandish repertoire of Chinese wedding backdrops, and all sorts of decorative stickers and gadgets, which Yanyan proudly confirms she’s purchased on Taobao. Before the tour is over, Yanyan pulls me aside into a spare bedroom. Under a big sunny window I spot a wire cage, inside which can be seen two hilariously plump critters chowing down on Chinese cabbage. “Our ham-bursters!” she said. “As soon as Li Ming gets a pay bump, we’ll start a litter of our own.”

  It’s now September, and June has just finished a series of summer courses at the prestigious Yonsei University in Seoul. Her infatuation with the South Korean chef in Beijing didn’t work out, but the weeks she spent wondering why led to a new academic interest—philosophy—and the moxie to one day pursue a master’s degree in it. Contrary to the warnings from her former colleagues (who are still clocking overtime hours without being paid for them), her legal career has not been destroyed, and she’s landed a plum position at a top-ranked law firm in Hong Kong. Recently settled into a spectacular apartment overlooking Kowloon, she is dating vigorously and putting all of the tactics she learned from Ivy to good use.

  Christy has landed an account doing PR for one of China’s biggest female celebrities. Quickly picking up on Christy’s discerning style, her client started asking Christy to shop for her as well—serving as a personal shopper, of sorts—which involves several trips a year to New York, where virtually every designer brand is cheaper than it is in China. Meeting her one evening for dinner in Midtown, she arrives with $75,000 worth of clothes for her client in a bag from Bergdorf Goodman. She has disregarded her mother’s mandate against higher education, and is pursuing an MBA at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, considered the Wharton of China.

  She has also suspended her OkCupid account and is “going steady” with an American pilot who is a few years her senior and wants to put some roots down. “On our first date he told me that he was looking for a wife, and that he owned three houses in Colorado,” said Christy. “And all I could think was: Why is he being so Chinese?!” But then they feasted on burgers, went dancing, and drank until the wee hours as he told her all about his adventures piloting private planes for the Saudi royal family.

  Zhang Mei is proud to have the first stamp on her passport, though she’s already back in Harbin after her much-anticipated trip to Tokyo. “The feelings just weren’t the same when I got there,” she explained upon her return. “I knew deep in my heart that a life in Japan with that man wasn’t for me, so I’ve decided to just cherish it for what it was. We had yuan [affinity] but no fen [destiny].” As she spoke, she sounded serene and from what I could tell, at peace with her decision. I think it also helps that on her flight back to China, she met a friendly Chinese graduate student returning home after completing a degree in Japan. His hometown is not very far from hers, and they’ve been doing a good job of staying in touch. “I really need to take planes more often!” she said, hinting that a trip to Thailand was next on her wish list. Harbin, after all, would always be there.

  The last time I saw Ivy, her status update came in the form of a visual cue—a sparkly new diamond on her left hand resting over an almost imperceptible baby bump. Following an underwhelming trip to the Maldives with the obscenely wealthy man who had been trying to marry her, she met a recently divorced surgeon who was keen to make her his new lady. He was by far the least wealthy of her conquests, but he was kind and had a very special way of igniting a twinkle in her almond eyes. “I’m in a good place,” she said, patting her stomach gently before adding, “it’s time for someone else to be the third wheel.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks are owed to my Beijing , who made life in China such an adventure: Beibei Wong, Sigrid Ekman, Gianvito D’Onghia, Marina Martin, Manya Koetse, Alessandra Marino, Jeanie Wang, Iris Wang, Daisy Sun, Elkin Bello, Angela Köckritz, Alexia Pestre, Marjorie Quach, Katia Loridon, Ana Fernanda Hierro Barba, Fergus Ryan, Guillermo Bravo, Valentina Salmoiraghi, Anne Li, Daphné Richet-Cooper, Paloma Sánchez, Mu Gao, Ma Shanshan, Cong Niu, Xin En Li, Annie Wang, Jordi Fakiani Axelsen, Weiwei Zuo, Liu Fang, James Flanagan, the inimitable Yolanda Wang and the entire cast of The Leftover Monologues. To Maya Reid for capturing me at my best. To Aziz Hoque for asking me to dance. To Leo Lee for turning everything to Technicolor. To Ryan Myers for being the “kittastrophe” to my “apopcolypse,” and with fondest of thanks to Celine Lange. Ça y est, j’ai fini de couver!

  I am equally grateful to those who selflessly offered their expertise, advice, and research, and who helped me remain connected to China after moving away: Mingjie Wang, Jessie Shi, Queenie Lin, Nina Huang, Janice Leng, and especially Wanda Wang, Carol Liu, Li Maizi, Yue Qian, Albert Esteve, Xiaobo Zhang, Yong Cai, and John Xenakis. To Xinran for being an inspiration, and with heartfelt thanks to Trena Keating and Amy Cherry for believing in this book.

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