Reproducing Chinese Culture in Diaspora by Huang Shu-min;

Author:Huang, Shu-min;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1680207
Publisher: Lexington Books

The Subordination of Women in the Domestic Gender Hierarchy

When the Yunnan refugees established Maehong village in 1964, they were sustained by the ideological canon of traditional Han Chinese culture that had provided them a secure mooring during their protracted war against the Communists who occupied their homeland. As explained above, this reified Confucian ethos is fundamentally male-centered and so marginalizes women. This cultural ideal was further reinforced by the fact that the occupations of the early Maehong settlers were either military personnel or caravan traders—professions pursued exclusively by males. Even after the village was fully settled in the 1980s, the strong emphasis on military hierarchy preserved the gender imparity and essentially naturalized it. Members of the village Self-Governing Committee (SGC, 自治會) were always appointed by General Li, and to this day no woman has ever been appointed director or deputy director of that organization. At public events, such as village meetings, women were not expected to speak. Any woman who did would be shut down with the criticism: “Ignorant women folk!” (不懂事的婦道人家.)

In daily life, women’s inferior social status is even more explicit. Incidences of domestic violence can only be whispered among the wives since they have no official authority to appeal to; such events are totally ignored by men as if they are the natural and normal state of affairs. Since a woman is a mere attachment of her husband in the patrilineage, she may lose everything, including the house she lives in and the farmland she works on, if her husband dies before she produces a son. The dead husband’s brothers may arrive unannounced and seize all the family belongings from her since she is no longer a part of the patrilineage.

Similarly, in terms of behavior, there is an explicit double standard that favors men over women. Men can engage in illicit activities, such as drug use, gambling, drunkenness, visiting prostitutes, taking concubines, and even wasting family assets with impunity and without provoking public censure. But for women, any hint of misconduct or impropriety exposes them to the rage of public opinion and sometimes even punishment at the hands of the SGC in the form of public humiliation or penalty. As anthropologist Chang clearly points out, for women, “The meaning of marriage was based on obligations instead of love. These obligations required fidelity to their husbands irrespective of their feelings, filial obedience to their parents-in-law, and production of male offspring. These were obligations conforming to the teachings of propriety (lijiao). Failure to fulfill any of these obligations could result in punishment or abandonment by the family” (Chang 2005: 62).

Two specific incidents that occurred in the 1990s fully demonstrate this strict expectation and are still discussed, privately, by village women today. The first occurred in 1996 and concerned a village woman who was accused of being an adulteress. Her husband, a drug addict, provided no support to her and their five children from his military pension. To support herself, this woman used an old pick-up truck as a commercial vehicle to transport goods and people for fees.

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