Wife-beating has no place in modern China
Lijia Zhang says changing the conservative mindset that normalises domestic violence in China will not be easy, but the support for two women in recent cases has been heartening
Chen Guihua, a 48-year-old grandmother, ekes out a living from a massage parlour in Tianjin, offering massage in the front room and sex in the back room. Her life as a "working girl" isn't a bed of roses but it is much better than her previous life - a battered wife living with an explosive husband, an experience she describes as "the 18th layer of hell".
I met Chen, originally from Liaoning, last year, while researching a book on prostitution. I was reminded of her story by two recent high-profile cases of domestic violence. In one case, Kim Lee, the American wife of the celebrity founder of Crazy English, a popular language-learning programme, won her divorce settlement; in the other, Li Yan, a woman from Sichuan , is facing execution for killing her abusive husband.
Chen could easily have been another Li Yan. She confessed to me that she thought about killing her husband but could not bring herself to do it.
Through matchmaking, Chen met and married a man who lived far away. She soon discovered he was hot-tempered. After the birth of their second daughter, the violence escalated as he blamed her for not producing a son. He would beat her with sticks or farming tools over trivial matters. When she dared to fight back, he dislocated her shoulder. She took refuge at her parents' home and started to talk about divorce. But, each time, her father would send her back with a warning not to disgrace the family.
Fearing for her life, Chen finally ran away after a severe beating and joined a friend who worked at the massage parlour in Tianjin.
Thus, another woman's life was ruined by domestic violence, now an epidemic in China. Research conducted by the All-China Women's Federation released last month indicated that one in four women have suffered domestic violence, while the Anti-Domestic Violence Network, a Beijing-based NGO, put it at one in three. "Domestic violence is caused by the disparity of power, an unequal relationship between men and women," said Feng Yuan, co-founder of the network.
I blame Confucius for the feudal male chauvinism plaguing society. According to Confucianism, a virtuous woman should be subordinate to her father before marriage, to her husband after marriage and to her son after the death of her husband. Chinese communists have undoubtedly improved the lot of women but they haven't wiped out Confucius' influence.