Tag Archives: gender

Changing Patterns of Rural Suicide (1980-2009)

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Below, I have summarized Liu Yanwu’s article, The Problem of Rural Suicide (1980-2006) [刘燕舞：中国农村的自杀问题（1980－2006)]. The article responds to previous research on rural suicide, which had focused on the changing status of rural women, rather than on the modernization of village society as a whole. Liu argues that changing intergenerational family dynamics and the rising divorce rate of rural couples has caused the changing pattern of suicide in rural China. After the article summary, I make a few observations on what research in Shenzhen contextualizes the question of rural suicide.

The Problem of Rural Suicides (1980-2009)

Abstract [translated from text]: Based on a uniform survey of 34 villages accross 7 provinces and analysis of the suicides of 604 farmers between 1980 and 2009, this author believes that the suicide rate in villages continues to rise. There has been a significant decline in young people’s suicides and the marked rise of elder suicide in contemporary villages. The declining suicide rate of young women lowered the overall rate of young people’s suicide, however, the rapid rise of elder suicide has meant that the overall rate of villager suicide continues to rise. The analysis suggests that the determining factor in this complex situation is not the migration of village young women, but rather changing intergenerational relations and the increase of divorce. At root, the more obvious systemic cause of the complex transformation of rural suicide is that modernity continues to erode villages.

Keywords: sucide rate of young women (青年女性的自杀率), suicide rate of the elderly (老年人的自杀率), transformation of intergenerational relations (代际关系变动), divorce (离婚), modernity (现代性) Continue reading →

Sexing the Greed, or How We’ve Gone from “Marrying Shenzhen” to “Can a Woman Get Married in Shenzhen?”

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Surfing 天涯深圳, I came across a brief post by an author who claimed that her friends had urged her to leave the city because

“A woman can’t marry in Shenzhen. The most desperate are those who’ve been here form more than two years. There are more and more leftover women in Shenzhen and it’s a big problem (在深圳嫁不掉。其中一个在深圳待了两年的人更是发感慨，深圳剩女越来越多，是个大麻烦)”.

Clearly, this is a small blip in the much larger national discussion of “leftover women (剩女),” which (according to 百度百科) designates upwardly mobile, successful women who are still unmarried as they approach their 30th birthday. The over-30 crowd, it goes without saying, are desperate or resigning themselves to being single for the rest of their lives. The term as well as the debate are obviously misogynistic. More distressingly, however, like the phrase “naked marriage (裸婚)”, the expression “leftover woman” sexes the greed that has come to characterize Socialism with Chinese characteristics as if by fixing what’s wrong with women we could fix what’s wrong with society.

It’s a scary logic. Continue reading →

life seasonings…

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Yesterday had lunch with friend and his son, a member of generation 90. The conversation turned to memories of life as an early 80’s college student in Beijing, while son politely played games on his phone.

Me: What interests me about your generation is that although today y’all are friends with your classmates, your children might not necessarily be friends because they are from different classes.

Old Zhang: That’s true. The country (国家) paid for us to go to college so once we were in, everybody was the same [economic] class. Now these young people have a hard time of it. I really feel sorry for them. [laughs] For example, falling in love. When we were in college we were all the same, so all you had to do was find someone you liked and then figure out how to open your mouth. But kids today [son looks up from cell phone], they have to match up everything – the right car and clothes and job and house. Love is just like salt, it’s the seasoning you add for flavor, not the dish itself.

[Old Zhang notices son looking up and continues in another vein]

This is why I’m encouraging him to get religious belief. It doesn’t really matter what. The point is that all our beliefs – in a better society, in the four modernizations, we achieved. There’s nothing left to do. Or, we don’t know what to do. That’s why belief is important.

Me: Or salt?

Old Zhang laughs, son goes back to game.

perfect partnerships

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The past few days, I have overheard friends comment that the spouse of a mutual friend isn’t in friend’s league. Admittedly, knocking a friend’s significant other is common enough cross-culturally, so inquiring minds might be wondering why I glommed to these moments of snark. Short answer: because I finally realized something about the social arrangements of family businesses. And yes, the social organization of these relationships seems universally neoliberal, even if (or because?) the evaluations of the roles that different spouses play varies in interesting (and gets read as) cultural difference.

Chinese power couples have an interesting division of social labor; one usually works human relationships and the other usually takes care of business. Continue reading →

the modern woman. . . what can’t she do?

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more fun with cellphone couplets, this time about the skills of the modern woman:

现代女性“十项全能”：上得了厅堂，下得了厨房；写得了代码，查得出异常；杀得了木马，翻得了围墙；开得起好车，买得起新房；斗得过二奶，打得过流氓。

The Modern Woman’s “Ten abilities”: She can entertain guests and cook up a storm; she can write a computer program and ferret out irregularities; she can kill viral Trojan horses and scamper over the firewall; she can drive a good car and buy a new house; she can take on a second wife and defeat a hooligan.

naked marriages; stripped at divorce

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I’ve recently heard the phrase 羡慕妒忌恨 (envy covet hate) to refer to situations where another is happy in a situation that shouldn’t make her happy. For example, someone with a full-time job might envy-covet-hate a part-time worker who is happy with her situation – free time, low stress job, low pay, few high-priced objects. The point, of course, is that those with “everything” the new economy has to offer – prestigious jobs, upscale homes, and fancy cars – aren’t happy and thus envy-covet-hate someone who feels happy with her life. In Mandarin, this deep sense of satisfaction / contentment / happiness is called 幸福感 and friends are quick to point out, published accounts notwithstanding, Shenzhen has one of the lowest happiness indexes in China. Continue reading →

千里求缘 – desperate fates

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Text of a personal add that I discovered stuck on a building wall outside the second line:

Seeking Shared Destiny

158 XXXX XXXX

The [principals in this] advertisement are represented by a lawyer’s office, they have already notarized [documents], the lady has already deposited 1.3 million rmb in escrow. This information is true, reliable, and guaranteed by a lawyer.

Commercial registration number: 08778955     Document number: 09121206

JIANG Xiaoyan, 28 years old, 1.65 meters, white skin, married to a wealthy Hong Kong businessman. Due to her husband’s infertility, she is unable to conceive a child. Worried that there is no one to inherit her extensive property and in order to avoid disputes, she is using the pretext of visiting relatives [in the Mainland] to find a caring, healthy, and upright young man to impregnate her. If she and the man reach an agreement during a phone negotiation, she will transfer a 300,000 rmb deposit [to your account], arrange a meeting with you, and then send 1 million rmb to you upon having a positive pregnancy test. This will not adversely influence your family, and lawyers will be responsible for maintaining secrecy. (You must call yourself, text messages will not be answered, don’t bother replying if you’re not sincere).

158 XXXX XXXX

what’s not to love?

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This bit of gossip illustrates the social construction of Shenzhen identities, so I’m not just pandering to my baser nature. Really. It may even tell us something about the socio-economic conditions predicating the globalization of yoga. That said, I’m sure it says something about education at Shenzhen University – hee!

I practice yoga at a great studio. Like many studios in Shenzhen, classes are held during the day, evening, and weekends. Their main clientele are upper middle class women from 20 to maybe 55ish, however, most of the women are in their 30s and 40s. There are several male students, but in any class, they are usually a party representative (党代表), which is slang for the only man in a group of women.

One of my friends teaches at Shenzhen University and has, on occasion, introduced interested students to the studio. A while back, one of her male students started practicing and usually joined her for evening class. Then two weeks ago, my friend couldn’t go to class and so student went by himself and found himself the recipient not only of all that female attention, but also invitations for dinner and trips. He finally decided on one of the more flexible cougars and they have been dating since.

Here’s the interesting part of this story: no one had approached him previously because they thought he and my friend were dating! They finally dared approach him on a day when she wasn’t there. In other words, the working assumption of the women and staff at the yoga studio was that when men show up for yoga, its couple’s yoga. Moreover, that when a younger man and woman go to class together, it means that the young man’s virtue is probably up for grabs (so to speak).

As my yoga studio turns: What’s not to love?

Householding perversions

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I have been thinking about the Generation 90s beauty who would would give her chest as a pillow (献酥胸当枕头求降房价的90后美女), householding as a way of locating oneself in a larger social order, the phallic order of Chinese writing conventions, and the perverse nature of Shenzhen’s housing situation.

Continue reading →

Life lessons

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Chinese politics confound me because they seem complicated and redundant. Fortunately, text messages simplify the problem. Of interest is the way that “family” operates as a metaphor to explain and justify power relationships. Actual job descriptions follow translation:

小姑娘看报，问妈妈：什么是党委，妈妈：党委就是你爸，整天不干活还老骂人。小姑娘又问：政府呢？妈妈：政府就是你妈，整天干活还被你爸骂。人大呢？人大就是你爷爷，名义是一家之主，但整天提着个鸟笼子，啥事不管。小姑娘又问：政协呢？妈妈：政协就是你奶奶，整天叨唠，但没人听她的。小姑娘还问：什么是团委？妈妈：团委就是你哥，整天在外瞎折腾，啥忙都帮不了，小姑娘最后问：什么是纪委？妈妈：纪委就是你，名义上是监督父母的，但是吃父母的，穿父母的，受父母领导，关键是还整天问这问那。

Reading the newspaper, a little girl asked her mother, “What’s the Party Committee?”

Mom answered, “The Party Committee is your father, who doesn’t do anything all day but yell at people.”

The little girl had another question, “What’s government?”

Mom answered, “Government is your mother, who works all day and still gets yelled at by your father.” Continue reading →