What the Chinese Don't Eat (5 page)

But why do some Chinese women still feel hopeless, even though the country has been opened up and improved so much since the 1980s? I discovered the answer through a woman I met a few years ago.

I was sitting beside her in hospital. She was called Mei-Hua and had tried to commit suicide. I asked her why. ‘Mei-Hua, I understood why you tried to kill yourself two years ago when you were in your village where you were bullied and abused by your exhusband. You have a better life now in the city as a cleaner in a hotel – so why did you do it again?’

She looked at me: ‘Why? I didn’t know that there was such a different life here compared with my village. Then I thought about it all the time. Why have I not had the chance to learn to read and write in my life? Why do I have no right to choose whom I love – because I am a second-class citizen? Why did I have to give up my baby girl, while the daughters of city people dress beautifully and walk around arm in arm with young boys? How can I face them with the daily pain of my missing daughter?

‘Why? What is wrong with my life? Why is my fate so poor? Why? Why?!’

Why? To be honest, I couldn’t answer any of her whys. Mei-Hua and I both fell silent.

A child will not ask you for ice cream if she has never tasted it. People do not feel pain in their life when they have nothing to compare it with. Over the past 100 years, when the first lights of freedom and democracy came to China, many educated women suffered from what they knew but could not get in their lifetime. Over the past 20 years, when many peasants and farmers have flooded into cities to seize their first opportunity to make a better life, hundreds of women have found themselves lost in the same ‘whys’ as Mei-Hua’s. I believe this is another of the reasons why Chinese women commit suicide.

Mei-Hua now has a job as a cleaner in a school thanks to her doctor. She can apparently now read basic children’s books.

Traditions may be dying out but forcing children to wash their parents’ feet won’t help

In China, state media have been reporting that school teachers in several places have been setting children the task of washing their parents’ feet for their homework. It is an exercise designed to re-emphasise the traditional virtue of respect for one’s elders, but it has met with some mixed reactions. The
China Daily
newspaper reported that at one school in Shanghai, most of the students did not complete the exercise and some of the parents were baffled by the task.

Washing feet is a part of the important ‘water culture’ in China. Traditionally, washing feet is done for three reasons: to clean dirty feet every day before going to bed (clean feet in bed is one of the most important things for Chinese at home); to improve health (the Chinese believe in massaging the feet during the washing, sometimes adding herbs to the hot water); and to help sex in marriage, which is why many rich people used to employ special foot-washers for their wives.

The Chinese believe that the foot is the lowest position in the human world. Therefore, we say, ‘everything starts from your foot’ – unlike the English ‘from the bottom’. So washing the feet is a way of showing respect to previous generations or your husband. It also is a way of expressing personal regret if you are feeling guilty.

But why should washing feet form part of students’ homework? I don’t know why Chinese schools are picking up this piece of tradition to educate younger generations in a modern city such as Shanghai. But I do understand those Chinese parents
and teachers who worry about what their children are losing – not only Chinese customs and traditions, but also how to think about life in a Chinese way, how to respect history and what previous generations have had to suffer in darker times.

A Chinese girl wrote an email to me a few months ago. She asked me: ‘Xinran, I cannot believe that you said everyone – even my intelligent mother, who was a university professor – had to wave a little red book following the stupid emperor Mao during the Cultural Revolution. If she did, how could I respect her? Everyone knows the Cultural Revolution was a killing movement.’

I replied: ‘Yes, everyone knows that today. But when you have been taught that Mao is our god and there is no other past, your eyes and ears are full of “red orders”. You have no choice but to follow if you want to live – both for your family, and your baby children.

‘Understand that it is easy to love and to give when you can do what you want. Your mother is a brave and intelligent woman because she knew how to give up her belief – for the family, for you. We have no idea how much pain she went through in that period. I am sure, because of her, you have this opportunity to study in the UK. You can think and ask me freely, something she could never do at your age.’

A friend in Shanghai called me last week complaining about her 22-year-old daughter. ‘She has become a very western girl, changes boyfriend every week, goes to nightclubs and pubs. Does she eat with us at the weekends? Does she cook? No, she has no interest in our Chinese traditions of health and food any more. Every day she eats Kentucky, McDonald’s, rubbish fast food. I don’t know how to get her back, how to save her Chinese identity!’ I didn’t offer any suggestions because I still don’t know how to make Chinese children seem Chinese in their mothers’ eyes.

Do I think foot-washing could help the younger generation understand our tradition? Or should we push our children back to the old ways? Will today’s young people forget their roots and become McDonald’s boys and girls?

Not at all. Young Chinese will not understand the meaning of foot-washing when they grow up with factory-made nappies instead of hand-made clothes. No one will want to go back to the Stone Age when we have warm homes with modern heating.

The teens and 20s are a shaky time for everyone, wherever they are from. They won’t understand what they need to take from traditions and ancestors, from other people and other countries and from their own experience, until they develop their own beliefs.

Young Chinese people now have opportunities given to them from all over the world, something previous generations never had. Once they have had time to explore these opportunities, I am sure they will develop new traditions of their own.

The Chinese are still obsessed with saving face. Isn’t it time we moved on and loosened up?

I have just got back from Iceland. It was a refreshing experience – not only because of the beautiful, cold weather, the open landscape, the northern lights and the way the coffee smelled on those dark mornings, but also because of the warm hearts of the Icelanders. They treat visitors as family – with their open minds and past full of pain and poverty. That is how I feel in China, except when it comes to talking about the past.

Almost every Icelander I met told me how poor their grandparents were: most had had to give away some of their children because they did not have enough to feed them all. Mothers had to count out the slices of bread for their daily rations. Girls married very early in order to give up their place in the home to their younger brothers or sisters. So many mothers had never known a life without worry.

There was no shame in their voices – they are proud of having moved on. They know how much they owe previous, impoverished generations. Their voices are full of respect and love for their poor parents.

Sixteen-year-old Fang, who is one of only two Chinese students in Iceland, told me that he was very surprised to find that Icelanders were so open and had no fear of losing face.

Iceland’s past is similar to China’s in many ways. But the Chinese have never opened up enough to tell people how poor they have been and how much they have suffered. Why? Because Chinese people cannot lose face. If you know any Chinese or
have been to China, I am sure you must know how important saving face is for the Chinese.

In the (not too distant) past, and even today in the poorer areas of China, most people saved money on food in order to spend it on clothes – because at least no one would see your empty stomach. In rural areas people used to keep a piece of salty fat and smear it on their lips as make-up to impress others even if they had nothing to cook that day.

Once a man from the countryside had been educated or become established in the city, his peasant family would no longer be allowed to visit him, for fear of the man losing face in front of his new friends and acquaintances.

In the days when we were lost on some levels, many men had to kill themselves to keep their brave image, even as some parents forced their ‘unclean’ daughters – ones who had been raped or had lost their husbands or been touched by another man – to die to save the family’s image.

When hundreds and thousands of Chinese starved in the 1960s, the newspapers continued to report large harvests, just so that we should not look unsuccessful. Even when we had a terrible earthquake in 1976, we hardly asked for any international aid in order to keep our self-respect.

Even though the numbers of Chinese women from rural areas committing suicide have topped world league tables in the past few years, many are still refusing to accept the truth to save their so-called liberated image.

So many city women also have to be traditional women at home. Even after a hard day’s work, as hard as any man’s, they end up doing the housework, looking after the child and the elderly relatives. Some people say this signifies ‘equal rights’ for their image as a good woman.

Think of those women who have had to give away their baby
girls. Few know who they are and no one holds them and soothes their broken hearts with warm, caring words because the families need a proud image for their family tree.

I don’t know how many Chinese lives it has cost to save face in the past. I don’t know how much time, energy and natural resources we are using up to maintain an image of power, just because we have not got enough international knowledge to educate younger generations to rid themselves of the vanity behind our image.

But I am glad to say that more and more young Chinese people notice the weakness of hiding behind such an image and have started questioning it: what is it for? I hope that soon we can be more free and open to tell people how much our Chinese grandmothers and mothers have given us through their suffering. The past is what makes up the roots of today; we need it for our future.

Chinese honesty means telling the bald truth. But do we really want that degree of sincerity?

Last weekend, I went to the opening party of a Chinese student centre in London. We hoped to talk about what the greatest difficulties were for Chinese students overseas; how they could get in touch with western people; and what we should do to help Chinese girls’ adoptive families in the west. But the first topic threw up so many problems that we ran out of time.

Some said they never understood what their professors and tutors meant by ‘fantastic’, ‘wonderful’ and ‘excellent’ – because even after being praised they found it hard to pass their exams. ‘Why are they not honest with us?’ they asked.

Some students doubted the western view of creation, and said they were always told to find points of argument against the eminent scholars and scientists who had proposed these ideas, and to come up with their own theories. ‘How are we meant to argue against the great thinkers? Why do we need to be taught if we can come up with theories of creation by ourselves?’

Some students complained that western students could easily spend their entire student years talking, drinking, and making friends and lovers, while most Chinese students were fighting with their homework. ‘How can we be the same age but live in such a different way?’

Some students felt sad about their classmates’ families. Some westerners were so cold when they talked about their parents, they said, and some seemed polite and distant in the way they related to their families. ‘Where else could we have a feeling of
relaxation and safety as children, except at home with our parents? You can not be anything without family.’

We talked for more than three hours. In the end, they asked what I thought of their impressions. I told them three stories instead.

The first story I read from a funny book. One day, God sent a messenger to check on people’s faith. The messenger returned and said Chinese people’s faith was far greater than that of western people.

‘Why?’ said God. ‘I haven’t got enough time to look after the Chinese.’

‘Chinese people always nod their heads when they read the Bible, but western people always shake their heads with doubt,’ said the messenger.

‘I need to give western people extra lessons on Sunday,’ God said.

What was behind this story? Until the 1930s, the Chinese read from top to bottom, so people thought we nodded when we read, whereas westerners read from left to right and look as if they are shaking their heads in disagreement.

Our judgments are always coloured by our limited knowledge of the differences in the world.

I heard the second story from a teacher at London University. Four students – from America, Europe, Africa and China – are asked by a journalist: ‘What’s your personal opinion about the international food shortage?’

The American replies: ‘What does international mean?’ The European asks: ‘What is shortage?’ The African asks: ‘What is food?’ And the Chinese student says: ‘What do you mean by personal opinion?’

Until the 1990s, the Chinese were closed in for thousands of years. We are not used to having our own ‘personal’ opinion.
But I am sure we know a lot that western people don’t. This is why we are welcome to study here, and share our differences with them.

The third story is something that happened to me. In 1997, in my first week in London, I was stopped by a Chinese man in Leicester Square. ‘Are you Xinran?’ he said in Chinese.

‘Aaah… um …’ I mumbled.

‘You are, I am sure!’ he said, and was too excited to wait for my answer. ‘Oh, it can’t be true! You can’t be Xinran!’

I didn’t understand what he was talking about, but he kept shouting, in a street full of other Chinese speakers. ‘Xinran, you can’t be so old! Your face, why has it become so ugly? Oh, no!’