Baby girls – and women – in China should be a thing of wonder, not pity
Kelly Yang says the Women’s March in Washington and around the world showed that millions, like her, value and respect women’s aspirations, and sent out the message loud and clear to misogynists
“It’s too bad you can’t have another baby because she’s a girl,” people said to my parents when I was born. It was the 1980s and China’s one-child policy was in full swing. My relatives looked at my pink toes and button nose with pity-filled eyes.
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That pity morphed into anger as I grew up. Anger at the fact that I didn’t partake in their theory, didn’t believe that women were lesser than men. Didn’t get knocked up and drop out of school, the way so many people gleefully warned. And then, when I did have kids, anger at the fact that my life didn’t just stop.
Nowhere is this sentiment more obvious than in the Shanghai “marriage park” where, every weekend, mothers with “leftover” daughters in their early and late 30s put advertisements up on umbrellas, hoping passers-by will help find them a match – any match.
I was in Shanghai the day after the US election. I’ll never forget walking through the park listening to the mothers pitch their daughters to strangers. Even as they lamented their girls not settling down, I could hear the pride in their voice as they talked about them, how far they had got in their careers. And they should be proud; every single one of the women on the umbrellas had to get past a Luo Mingxiong to get where they are.
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They were words that had kept me awake at night, words I fought tooth and nail to get over, to prove wrong. In that moment, it all came flooding back, all that shame, sadness and pain.
I left the park that day writhing. For the next few months, I settled into a cocoon of silence. As a Chinese-American living in Asia, it’s not easy to talk about the US election. People here either couldn’t care less or are quick to say: “How about that Trump you guys made president!” I wanted to say I’m not one of those guys.
I’m one of the guys who voted for equality. For diversity; for love; for tolerance. For “Black Lives Matter”; for freedom, for respect, for kindness. For the right to have control over my own body. For all the things my parents left their home and family for to slave away as first-generation immigrants in the United States so that I would have this day.
Yet, whenever I opened my mouth and spoke my passion, people rolled their eyes at me: “See. That’s why Trump won. Because you just don’t get it. You need to get real!” As though my values were made of pixie dust, not constitutional amendments.
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To all the marchers, thank you for shouting this message loud and clear, across oceans of doubt, so that little girls growing up in China can hear you and find the courage to stand up to people like Luo. And when they’re 35, not have to sit on the backs of umbrellas. And hopefully one day, when the next generation gazes down on baby girls, their eyes will not be filled with pity. But with wonder.
Kelly Yang teaches writing at the Kelly Yang Project, an after-school centre for writing and debating in Hong Kong. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard Law School. www.kellyyang.edu.hk