Series Epigraph
“I want to tell her ‘Get over it.  And whatever you do, please don’t give us a third book about your relationship with your mother. Writing’s supposed to be cathartic, not fixating.’” – an American friend’s words after finishing Amy Tan’s second book, The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991)

Artwork of Shena

Net Profit, Net Loss … and Growth?

Part II of this series ended with the idea that instrumental love won’t save the net but will delay its unraveling.   Let’s look here in Part III at married Taiwanese women’s defense of the net.

Safe from what?

I asked some unmarried twenty-something females what percent of mothers in Taiwan they thought loved their daughters unconditionally. The answers I got were 15-20%. Probably most mothers everywhere help run their particular culture’s patriarchy.  And I haven’t been that many places, so I’m not familiar with that many cultures.  Never had I imagined, though, let alone seen, a place like Taiwan where women have so much leverage that they didn’t want to use.  Why are Taiwanese women in the twenty-first century not, Lysistrata-like, dismantling a cartoon “patriarchy” in which daughters-in-law are expected to “follow” mothers-in-law? The answer is obvious: they’ve escaped from patriarchy as much as they want to for now.
» Continue reading “Where’s Lysistrata? Taiwan’s Not-yet-dauntless Females – Part III” »

Series Epigraph
“I want to tell her ‘Get over it.  And whatever you do, please don’t give us a third book about your relationship with your mother. Writing’s supposed to be cathartic, not fixating.’” – an American friend’s words after finishing Amy Tan’s second book, The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991)

Art of Shena

Lysistrata and the Net; Every Fish Gets Caught

Many Taiwanese women are charming, polite, good-humored, intelligent, resourceful, and possess a great capacity to endure.  They can be tenacious in pursuit of educational or career goals, too.  Almost none are Lysistrata-dauntless, though. In twenty years in Taiwan, I’ve met only one who was: an ex-girlfriend.  “Boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend,” she exclaimed in disgust to her young work colleagues one day.  “Can’t you ever talk about something more substantial?”  Like what, they asked, astonished.  “Us as persons and our lives as women, not just as girlfriends,” she said, showing them a copy of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.

More dauntless at 26 than any person I’d met anywhere, she dazzled her colleagues with her daring.  They begged her to take them with her to clubs, taking nights off from their boyfriends to tag along; and they limited boyfriend talk around her.  Given such magnetism, I thought she’d forever persevere, forever stay undaunted – but I was wrong.  “The society is like a giant net here,” she explained to me three years after we broke up.  “Every fish sooner or later gets caught.”
» Continue reading “Where’s Lysistrata? Taiwan’s Not-yet-dauntless Females – Part II” »

About two months ago my friend Zeng gave birth to a baby daughter. Just like most Chinese girls she wanted to have a child immediately after getting married but there were some medical problems and it took few years before she finally became mother.

When I called to congratulate her, she just had finished the “zuo yue zi” (坐月子) – one month period from the childbirth during which Chinese young mothers follow a long list of strict rules.

“Jiaqi*, never again!” – complained Zeng – “I don’t care about the pain of delivery, but zuo yue zi… that’s too much”

* – Jiaqi is my Chinese name

Of course, I know the customs to which postpartum women in China obey, but I was curious to hear more from someone who just experienced them firsthand. What was so terrible about them?
» Continue reading “Some Weird Things Chinese Women Do After Giving Birth” »