The Good Women Of China

by Xinran

  The woman’s university colleagues chided her for spoiling her husband. Some of her students also expressed their disapproval. They asked her why she was putting herself through so much for such an unworthy man. The woman replied helplessly, ‘He used to love me very much.’

  Jin Shuai was incensed by my story, but recognised that it was a very common situation.

  ‘I think more than half of all Chinese families are made up of women who are overworked and men who sigh over their unfulfilled ambitions, blaming their wives and throwing tantrums. What’s more, many Chinese men think that saying a few loving words to their wives is beneath their dignity. I just don’t get it. What has happened to the self-respect of a man who can live off a weak woman with an easy conscience?’

  ‘You are sounding like a feminist,’ I teased her.

  ‘I’m no feminist – I just haven’t found any real men in China. Tell me, how many women have written to your show to say that they are happy with their men? And how many Chinese men have asked you to read out a letter saying how much they love their wife? Why do Chinese men think that to say the words “I love you” to their wives undermines their status as a man?’

  The two men at the next table were pointing at where we were sitting. I wondered what they made of Jin Shuai’s fierce expression.

  ‘Well, that’s something Western men say because of their culture.’ I made an attempt to defend the fact that I had never received such a letter.

  ‘What, you think it’s a cultural difference? No, if a man doesn’t have the courage to say those words to the woman he loves before the world, can you call him a man? As far as I’m concerned, there are no men in China.’

  I was silent. Faced with a woman’s heart that was young and yet frozen solid, what could I say? But Jin Shuai laughed.

  ‘My friends say that China has finally come into line with the rest of the world when it comes to our topics of conversation. Since we no longer have to worry about not having enough food or clothes, we discuss the relationship between men and women instead. But I think the subject of men and women is even more complex in China. We have to contend with over fifty ethnic groups, countless political changes and prescriptions for the behaviour, bearing and dress of women. We even have over ten different words for wife.’

  For a moment, Jin Shuai looked like a carefree, innocent girl. Her enthusiasm suited her better than the carapace of the PR girl and I liked her better.

  ‘Hey, Xinran,’ she said, ‘can we talk about all the famous sayings associated with women. For example, “A good woman doesn’t go with a second man.” How many widows in China’s history have not even considered remarrying in order to preserve the reputation of their families? How many women have “emasculated” their female nature for the sake of appearances? Oh, I know “emasculate” isn’t a word used for women, but that’s what it is. There are still women like that now in the countryside. And then there’s the one about the fish . . .’

  ‘What fish?’ I had never heard this figure of speech and realised I must seem very ignorant in the eyes of the younger generation.

  Jin Shuai sighed ostentatiously and tapped the table with her varnished fingernails. ‘Oh, poor Xinran. You haven’t even got the various categories of women straight. How can you possibly hope to understand men? Let me tell you. When men have been drinking, they come out with a set of definitions for women. Lovers are “swordfish”, tasty but with sharp bones. “Personal secretaries” are “carp”, the longer you “stew” them, the more flavour they have. Other men’s wives are “Japanese puffer fish”, trying a mouthful could be the end of you, but risking death is a source of pride.’

  ‘And what about their own wives?’

  ‘Salt cod.’

  ‘Salt cod? Why?’

  ‘Because salt cod keeps for a long time. When there is no other food, salt cod is cheap and convenient, and makes a meal with rice . . . All right, I’ve got to go to “work”. You shouldn’t have listened to me rabbiting on for so long. Why didn’t you say anything?’

  I was silent, preoccupied by the startling comparison of wives with salt cod.

  ‘Don’t forget to answer my three questions on your programme: What philosophy do women have? What is happiness for a woman? And what makes a good woman?’

  Jin Shuai finished her tea, picked up her handbag and was gone.

  I pondered Jin Shuai’s questions for a long time, but I realised that I didn’t know the answers. There seemed such a huge gap between her generation and mine. In the course of the next few years, I had the opportunity to meet many more university students. The temperaments, attitudes and lifestyles of the new generation of Chinese women who had grown up during the period of ‘Reform and Opening Up’ were entirely different from those of their parents. But although they had colourful theories on life, there was a deep layer of emptiness behind their thoughts.

  Could they be blamed for this? I did not think so. There had been something missing from their upbringing that had made them like this. They had never had a normal, loving environment in which to grow up.

  From the matriarchal societies in the far distant past, the position of Chinese women has always been at the lowest level. They were classed as objects, as a part of property, shared out along with food, tools and weapons. Later on, they were permitted to enter the men’s world, but they could only exist at their feet – entirely reliant on the goodness or wickedness of a man. If you study Chinese architecture, you can see that many long years passed before a small minority of women could move from the side chambers of the family courtyard (where tools were kept and the servants slept) to chambers beside the main rooms (where the master of the house and his sons lived).

  Chinese history is very long, but it has been a very short time since women have had the opportunity to become themselves and since men have started to get to know them.

  In the 1930s, when Western women were already demanding sexual equality, Chinese women were only just starting to challenge male-dominated society, no longer willing for their feet to be bound, or to have their marriages arranged for them by the older generation. However, they did not know what women’s responsibilities and rights were; they did not know how to win for themselves a world of their own. They searched ignorantly for answers in their own narrow space, and in a country where all education was prescribed by the Party. The effect that this has had on the younger generation is worrying. In order to survive in a harsh world, many young people have adopted the hardened carapace of Jin Shuai and suppressed their emotions.

  4

  The Scavenger Woman

  By the wall of the radio station, not far from the security guards, there was a row of small shacks pieced together from scrap metal, roofing felt and plastic bags. The women who lived here supported themselves by collecting rubbish and then selling it. I often wondered where they were from, what had brought them together, and how they had come to end up there. In any case, it was wise of them to have chosen a relatively safe place for their shacks, just a shout away from the armed guards on the other side of the wall.

  Among the scattered huts, the smallest of them stood out. The materials from which it was built were not different, but it had been carefully designed. The scrap-metal walls had been painted with a bright sunset, and the roofing felt had been folded into a castle-like turret. There were three small windows made from red, yellow and blue plastic bags, and a door made of coloured cardboard woven with strips of plastic sheeting, which would have no difficulty keeping out the wind and rain. I was moved by the care and attention to detail that had obviously gone into building this flimsy hut, and found the wind chimes made of broken glass tinkling gently over the door especially poignant.

  The owner of this scrap castle was a thin, frail woman of over fifty. It was not only her shack that was unique; she too was set apart from the other scavenger women by her appearance. Most of the women had dishevelled hair and dirty faces, and were dreadfully ragged, but this woman kept herself neat, a
nd her worn clothes were scrupulously clean and well mended. But for the bag she carried to collect rubbish, you would never imagine she was a scavenger. She seemed to keep to herself.

  When I told my colleagues what I had observed of the scavenger woman, they piped up one after the other that they too had noticed her, not wanting me to feel that I was in any way unique. One of them even told me that the scavenger women were keen listeners to my programme. I could not tell if they were mocking me.

  From the sidelines, Big Li, who reported on social issues, rapped his desk with a pen, a sign that he was about to give his younger colleagues a lecture.

  ‘You shouldn’t pity the scavengers. They are not poor at all. Their spirits transcend the mundane world in a way that ordinary people can’t imagine. There is no room in their lives for material possessions, so their material desires are easily satisfied. And if you take money as a standard by which to judge people, you will find that some of those women are no worse off than people in other jobs.’ He told us that he had seen a scavenger woman in an expensive nightclub, covered in jewels and drinking French brandy at a hundred yuan a glass.

  ‘What nonsense!’ retorted Mengxing, who worked on the music programme. To her, the difference in their ages alone meant that she never believed anything Big Li said.

  Normally the most cautious of men, Big Li unexpectedly got the bit between his teeth and offered to make a bet with Mengxing. Journalists love stirring things up, so everyone else enthusiastically started pitching in with suggestions about what the stake should be. They decided on a bicycle.

  To carry out the bet, Big Li lied to his wife saying that he would be doing some evening reports, and Mengxing told her boyfriend that she had to go out and research contemporary music. Every night, for several days in succession, the two of them went to the nightclub Big Li claimed was frequented by the scavenger.

  Mengxing lost. Sipping whisky, the scavenger had told Mengxing that her income from selling rubbish was 900 yuan a month. Big Li said that Mengxing had been in shock for hours. Mengxing earned about 400 yuan per month, and she was considered one of the favoured employees of her grade. From then on, Mengxing was no longer particular about the artistic value of a job; as long as she could earn money, she would take on absolutely anything. Everyone in the office said that the loss of her bicycle had brought on this new pragmatism.

  Despite having noticed the tidy woman who lived in the scrap castle, I had not paid much more attention to the manner in which the scavengers passed their days. Frankly, part of me shied away from them. However, after Mengxing’s encounter, every time I saw people scavenging I would try to guess if they were really ‘fat cats’. Perhaps the scavenger women’s shacks were just their workplaces, and their homes were ultra-modern flats.

  It was the pregnancy of my colleague Xiao Yao that prompted me to get to know the scavenger woman. As soon as Xiao Yao found out she was going to have a baby, she started to look for a nanny. I could understand her starting her search nine months in advance: finding someone reliable to look after a child and do the housework was no easy task.

  My own nanny was a kind, honest and diligent nineteen-year-old country girl, who had fled alone to the big city to escape a forced marriage. She had some native intelligence, but it had never been given the help of education. This placed all sorts of obstacles in her way: she could not tell one banknote from another, or understand the traffic lights. At home she could be reduced to floods of tears because she could not get the lid off the electric rice cooker, or would mistake gourmet pickled eggs for rotten eggs and throw them in the bin. Once, she pointed to a litter bin by the side of the road, telling me in all seriousness that she had put my letters in that ‘postbox’. Every day I would leave careful instructions about what she should and should not do, and would telephone regularly from the office to check that everything was all right. Fortunately, nothing ever went terribly wrong and she and PanPan had a very loving relationship. There was one time, however, when I had been unable to stop myself being angry. It was winter and I arrived home after my programme to find PanPan, then only eighteen months old, sitting in the stairwell of the fifth floor, dressed only in a thin pair of pyjamas. He was so chilled by the bitter cold that he could only cry in faint moans. I hastily gathered him in my arms and woke the sleeping nanny, reproaching myself for not being able to give my child the time or care a mother should.

  I never discussed my own childcare difficulties with my colleagues, but I heard plenty of horror stories from other people. The newspapers were full of them. Careless maids had let children fall from fourth-floor windowsills to their deaths; others, ignorant and foolish, had put children in washing machines for a wash, or shut them in the fridge during a game of hide-and-seek. There were cases of children being kidnapped for money, or beaten.

  Few couples were prepared to ask their parents for help with childcare, as that would involve living under the same roof. Most were prepared to have their lives made a bit more difficult in order to avoid the critical eyes of the older generation. Chinese mothers-in-law, especially the traditional or less educated ones, were legendary for terrorising their sons’ wives, having cowered under their own mothers-in-law in their time. On the other hand, a woman giving up her job to be a full-time mother was impracticable, because it was next to impossible to support a family on an average single income. House-husbands were unheard of.

  Listening to Xiao Yao’s pleas for help to find a trustworthy, affectionate and cheap nanny, Old Chen responded flippantly, ‘There are so many women around picking up scrap, why don’t you ask one of the poor ones to work for you? You wouldn’t have to worry about her running off, and you wouldn’t need to pay her a lot either.’

  People say that men are good at seeing the big picture, and women are good on detail. Like all generalisations, I have never believed this to be true, but Old Chen’s throwaway remarks amazed me with the kind of genius-bordering-on-idiocy that you sometimes find in men. I was not the only one who felt this way. Several of my female colleagues were also beside themselves with excitement: ‘Yes! Why didn’t we think of that before?’

  Confirmation of Chairman Mao’s famous words – ‘A single spark can start a prairie fire’ – swiftly followed. Choosing a scavenger as a nanny became a subject of fevered conversation among my female colleagues for several days. Since all their children were of different ages, they thought they might find someone they could share. They made detailed plans about how to supervise and assess her, and what kind of rules to set.

  Soon after, I was asked to attend a ‘women’s meeting’ in the small meeting room next to the women’s toilets. No sooner had I sat down and asked uneasily if they had not called the wrong person, than they announced that I had been unanimously chosen as their representative to pick a nanny from among the scavenger women living by the radio station. In a militant manner that brooked no argument, they set forth the criteria that had led them to choose me as their representative. This was the first time my female colleagues had displayed any approval of me. They said that I appeared sincere, that I had the human touch and common sense, and that I was thorough, thoughtful and methodical. Despite suspecting them of ulterior motives, I was touched by their estimation of me.

  Over the next few days, I started inventing excuses to go over to the scavenger women’s huts. But the results of my observations were disappointing: looking at the women rooting around for salvageable rubbish, it was difficult to imagine them as caring, reasonable people, let alone think of inviting them into the home. They wiped their snot on to anything within reach, and those who had children tucked them under their arms to leave their hands free for picking rubbish. With only a piece of paper to shield them, they relieved themselves by the roadside.

  The only scavenger woman worth considering was the owner of the scrap castle. In her daily activity, she seemed to display kindness, cleanliness and warmth. After several false starts, I worked up enough courage to stop her on her way home.


  ‘Hello! My name is Xinran, I work at the radio station. Excuse me, but may I have a word with you?’

  ‘Hello. I know you. You’re the presenter of Words on the Night Breeze. I listen to your programme every night. What can I do for you?’

  ‘It’s like this . . .’ I, the radio presenter who could talk endlessly in front of the microphone, suddenly grew so incoherent that I could barely follow my own babbling speech.

  The scavenger lady was quick to grasp what I had in mind. She replied calmly, but decisively. ‘Please thank your colleagues for their good opinion of me, but it would be very hard for me to accept their generous offer. I like to live an unfettered life.’ She swept away all the persuasive talents my colleagues had seen in me with one quiet sentence.

  When I reported back to my colleagues, they could not believe their ears. ‘The great radio presenter can’t even talk a scavenger round . . .’

  There was nothing I could have done. The look in the scavenger lady’s eyes prevented all argument. I felt that there was more than simple refusal in her expression, but did not know what.

  From then on, observing the scrap castle and its owner became part of my daily routine. One evening in the second month of autumn, I finally got another chance to get close to the little hut. After I had finished my programme, I walked past the scavengers’ shacks as usual. When I passed the scrap castle, the faint sound of singing drifted out – it was the Russian folk song ‘Grasslands’. I grew intensely curious. After the Cultural Revolution, China had been through another Cold War with Russia, so not many people knew this song; even fewer knew it well enough to sing it. My mother had studied Russian at university and taught me the song. How had the scavenger woman come to know it?