International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 10, No.

L 1996

Language, Gender, and Chinese Culture

Carol C. Fan

INTRODUCTION

The structure of language functions as a tool to define and constrain

women's activities and power in society. As language constructs reality, 1 it
perpetuates the devaluation of women; but it also provides a means by
which this devaluation can be overcome. French feminists argue that lan-
guage, signs, and symbols are keys to understanding gender construction, z
English and American feminist linguists have discussed the substance of
the English language as literally man made and under male control)
American historian and feminist theorist Joan Scott has also proposed that
the analysis of language provides a starting point for understanding how
social relations are conceived, how institutions are organized, how relations
of production are experienced, and how collective identity is established. 4
Hence, many recent feminist theorists analyze history from the standpoint
of language and textuality and, in doing so, attempt to define the relation-
ship between history and language.5 However, although much has been
written on linguistic gender biases in English and French, as yet little has
appeared on the linguistic gendering of Chinese.
The following textual and historical analysis will show how gender
identity is both constructed and reflected through language in Chinese cul-
ture and society. I shall analyze how linguistic imbalances bring into sharper
focus real-world inequities. I attempt to single out those linguistic usages
that have demeaned women from antiquity to the present. My analysis ex-
tends to a consideration of the functions of a public-and-private sphere
ideology and of values assigned to private social relations and the family
in the structuring of gender inequality. An analysis of the particulars of
linguistic forms indicates the patriarchal forms of meaning and denomina-
tion embedded in the very physical structure of the Chinese language.
These linguistic forms are both reflective and constitutive of the historical

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© 1996 Human Sciences Press, Inc.

96 Fan

realities of the relationships of women to the state, to the family, and to

the trajectories of revolution and reform that are described in the following
sections. The relevance of linguistic innovation by women as an instrument
of gender liberation is then illustrated through an analysis of the develop-
ment of the "women's scripts" (niishu) in the mountainous region of
Shangjiangxu, Jiangyong county, Hunan province.
China is undergoing a complex process of modernization. Recent eco-
nomic reforms, aimed at integrating China into global market systems, is
likely to come into conflict with the maintenance of a socialist political
system. This dualism gives rise to conflicting cultural modes. It would be
rewarding to analyze the relationship between emerging cultural modes and
economic processes and their impact on women. But the cultural contra-
dictions attendant to the uneasy coexistence of market capitalism and po-
litical socialism are superimposed upon the cultural contradictions of
Chinese tradition and modernity that already informed the consolidation
of the Chinese Revolution itself. Chinese women are subjected to the vary-
ing and conflicting strains of being cast in the image of the traditional fam-
ily role of "good wife and wise mother," dealing with the residual
imperatives of limited socialist gender egalitarianism, and being absorbed
in the processes of Westernization and commodification.

THE SEMANTIC STEM OF FEMALE (n/i)

Central to the examination of the gendering of the Chinese language

is how the Chinese character for woman (n//) is semantically and culturally
deployed. The Chinese character for female (n//) consists of a pictographic
representation of a person kneeling with hands folded, a pose seen as a
form of submission. The etymology and applications of other characters
that use the semantic stem of woman (n//), demonstrate the linguistic prece-
dents that subsequently confirm gender inequality and the development of
patriarchy. Gender construction for females starts early. At the age of
seven, girls are supposed to be separated from boys in all the social activi-
t i e s - a s the saying goes, male and female have separate spheres (nannii
yubie). A woman during her lifetime lives with two families--in her "uter-
ine ''6 and marital homes. A woman is thought to marry into her husband's
family, so the character female plus home conveys the word meaning mar-
riage (jia). After she is married she becomes a wife or woman (fu). This
character consists of a female with a broom signifying submission and the
duty to do housework; hence, it attests to a gender division of labor. Once
married and under her husband's roof, the wife's condition is identified as
being content (an). Three women together are up to something wicked and
Language, Gender, and Chinese Culture 97

treacherous (jian). A good and capable wife is described as being successful

because of the activities of domestic service (x/an neizhu); but a man's
achievements do not include credit for the assistance and sacrifices he has
received from his spouse.
The semantic stem of female (na) is mated with other signs to become
an accomplice in myriad characters. There are about 250 characters con-
taining the form of nil: some of them are descriptive, others are compli-
mentary of woman's physical attributes. The rest of them have negative
meanings such as cunning and deviousness of speech (ning); weak, timid
and lazy (ruo); wicked, treacherous, and evil (jian); silly, frivolous, and mis-
chievous (shuo); seductive and evil (yao); preposterous and arrogant
(wang); and ambitious and avaricious (/an). A woman and a stone mean
jealousy (du), one of the undesirable characteristics of women in a poly-
gynous society. A woman and a hand means servant (nu). A heart written
below this character makes the verb for becoming angry (nu), because
women who lose their temper easily are difficult to get along with. A
woman under a spear means male power and authority (wei): men assert
their authority by subjugating women through physical force. Male domi-
nance and female subordination are evident in such idioms as "males re-
spected, females despised" (nazun nubei), "male and female" (nannii),
"husband and wife" (fufu), and "son and daughter" (ernu). This kind of
lexical usage even appears in a phrase meant to connote gender equality
(nannii pingdeng)--the male character is placed ftrst. The idiom, "When
husband calls, wife follows" (fuchangfusui) enforces the superiority of men
and the inferiority of wives in the home.
There are many other terms that describe women in specifically de-
rogatory ways: woman's heart and moods shift quickly, (niiren shangbian);
woman's heart is most evil (zuidu furen x/n); women are a cause of troubles
(niiren hoshui); women are short-sighted; a woman is flirting, bewitching,
fox-like, or she is the female yaksa--a frightful, malicious, ugly woman
(muyeca).
Traditionally, women were supposed to be seen and not heard in pub-
lie. If a woman expressed her opinion, it would be considered as just a
"woman's expression" (furen zhi jian). If she tried to show compassion like
an ideal Confucian scholar, what she did would be described as a "woman's
kindness" (furen zhiren).

WOMEN AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE STATE

The Chinese writing system goes back to the Shang dynasty (1765-1122
B.C.) and possibly earlier and was intimately related to the development
98 Fan

of the dynastic state. The most important of the wujing edited by Confucius
(551 B.C.-479 B.C.) became the orthodox Five Classics doctrine of the state
by the time of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.). In the Book of Odes,
there is clear evidence of gender inequality: "When a baby boy was born
he was laid on the bed and given jade to play with (longzhang), and when
a baby girl was born she was laid on the floor and given a tile to play
with" (longwa).7 It was considered essential to exclude women from public
life to preserve social stability and the order of the cosmos:
If women are entrusted with tasks involving contact with the outside, they will cause
disorder and confusion in the Empire, harm and bring shame on the Imperial Court,
and sully sun and moon . . . . The Book o f Documents cautions against the hen
announcing dawn instead of the cock (p/n ji si Chert).s

The Book of Odes denounces a clever woman overthrowing a state:

A clever man builds a city w a l l / A clever woman overthrows it/Beautiful is the
clever woman, but she is an owl/a hooting owl/A woman with a long tongue, she
is a promoter of evil/Disorder is not sent down from Heaven, it is produced by
women/Those who cannot be instructed or taught are women and eunuchs . . . .
And therefore the women have no public service. They have to abide by their silk-
worm work and their weaving.9

Chinese male scholars who created the Classics granted the power of
naming only to themselves. Women learned from childhood to perceive
the world through the eyes of men. Because they were denied the oppor-
tunity to receive a formal education, they were seen as unqualified to par-
ticipate in public service, especially in politics. Throughout Chinese history,
women were considered bearers of trouble who would bring confusion and
disorder (luan) to the political arena. On the other hand, although the
warning quoted above was against the regency of an empress dowager,
there is no legal codification of this point of view. In the Qing @nasty,
dynastic statutes included a section on empress dowagers attending to state
affairs from behind a screen, a practice given explicit sanction by dynastic
law.1° "It had become a dynastic institution, which, though occasionally pro-
hibited and criticized, was often resorted to as a measure of emergency
and expediency.''11 There were in fact strong women leaders who ruled in
many periods of China's long history. Empress dowagers, such as Empress
Lu (reign 188-180 B.C.) served as regents of Former Han, 12 and Empress
Cixi (1835-1908) dominated the politics of the Qing dynasty for half a cen-
turyJ 3 Both these women exerted considerable influence on Chinese his-
tory. Wu Zhao (r 690-705) of the Tang, the only female emperor in Chinese
history who founded her own dynasty, based her power on the expansion
of opportunities for the successful candidates of the civil service examina-
tion system who entered the state bureaucracy. She commissioned the
building of monasteries, pagodas, and the Longmen caves in Loyang. 14 But
Language, Gender, and Chinese Culture 99

it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that women joined
men in battlefield revolts, against the Qing government, joining popular
uprisings--especially the Taiping, and Boxer Rebellions. Many women fol-
lowing Jiu Jin (executed in 1907 after leading an aborted anti-Qing upris-
ing) joined the radical revolutionary movements that seriously challenged
the dominant system of Confusion social relations. 15
But despite these dynastic and revolutionary precedents, women on
the whole remained marginalized in their formal participation in the state.
During the June 4th [Tiananmen Square] movement of 1989, Chai Ling
and Wang Chaohua were the only two women leaders of the student move-
ment; women's issues were ignored in the male-dominated activities; and
Chai's critique of traditional gender and family relationships met with in-
difference. 16 In 1993 women constituted only 13.5 percent of the full mem-
bers of the National People's Congress and 9.2 percent of the standing
committee members of the Communist Party. x7
The exclusion of women from more than episodic or marginal partici-
pation in the historical development of the Chinese state is culturally and
structurally intertwined with their reclusion in the patriarchal Chinese fam-
ily system and the overwhelming impact of this gender sequestration on
the entirety of Chinese culture, displayed in the very semantic roots of the
Chinese language.

WOMEN AND THE FAMILY

There is little writing in the Five Classics about women as people; rather
women are treated in terms of their family roles as daughters, wives, and
mothers. One of the Five Classics, the Book of Changes (Yi Jing) established
the most basic equations of male (yang) and female (yin), with parallel du-
alisms of heaven and earth, and sun and moon. In the beginning the two
cosmic forces were equal but different and complementary in function. "By
the classical age of Zhou (1027-221 B.C.) that order was transformed to
create a sexual hierarchy in which the female came with time to hold the
subordinate place. In other words, the Five Classics did not initiate female
subordination but justified it. They did so largely by speculating on the na-
ture of woman, and by demonstrating her natural inferiority. ''is
In the Analects, Confucius equated women and inferior persons
(xiaoren), the antonym to the more superior man (junzi). "It is only women
and worthless persons who are difficult to take care of, if you draw them
close, they are immodest, if you keep them at a distance, they complain."
Mencius's story of his good mother together with an accumulation of legend
relating to motherly and wifely devotion gave these roles a deceptive glory
100 Fan

in the official dynastic history. Confucian tradition emphasizes ancestor

worship as an expression of the continuity of lineage. This emphasis on
the continuity of the family line led to the placing of great value on pro-
ducing sons. Mencius said, "There are three things which are unfilial, and
the greatest of them is to have no descendant." The paramountcy of lineage
constructed politically the single most important identity for Chinese
women, transforming all social and economic relationships associated with
it. Mencius's aphorism is a synecdoche for cultural practices that have had
an adverse and even deadly impact on Chinese women, including many
closely successive pregnancies, the practice of polygyny, child marriage, and
female infanticide. Historically, infanticide and abortion were by and large
not regarded as crimes, although infanticide was criminalized in the Qin
(221-220 B.C.), the Hun (202 B.C.-220 A.D.), the Southern Sung (1127-
1279), and the Yuan (1279-1368) dynasties} 9
Enormous population growth was one of the consequences of the cen-
trality of lineage to Chinese patriarchy; the tenacity of these traditions was
most recently and forcefully asserted when the one-child-per family policy
instituted by the Communist government in 1979 issued in the dramatic
rise of female infanticide in contemporary China. Female infanticide is
combined with abandonment and with the abortion of female fetuses. The
number of missing girls reached almost 1.2 billion in 1989. This trend is
part of a larger social phenomenon that is rooted in a complex interweaving
of traditional culture with contemporary politics in China. 2° According to
interviews conducted in three Shaanxi villages in 1988 and in 1993, the
traditional reproductive ideal was very pervasive among people in rural ar-
eas: 86 percent of the about one thousand women interviewed named the
two-child family with at least one son as the best, because they considered
one child as simply not enough--if the child died, the couple would be
without issue, a social, cultural, and economic tragedy. 21 In traditional
China, there was no pension security system for most of the population,
and effectively speaking that situation persists today, especially in rural
China. Boys are the primary sources of support and care for the elderly
parents. As the saying goes "To raise a son is security for old age" (yanger
fanglau).
During the Hart dynasty, men's relationship to women developed into
a codified superior-inferior status as interpreted by an authoritative Con-
fucian scholar, Dong Zhongshu (179-104 B.C.). "The ruler is yang, the sub-
ject yin; the father is yang, the son yin; the husband is yang, the wife yin. ''22
The code of behavior for women in the Hun dynasty was the three obedi-
ences and the four virtues (sancong side). A woman should obey her father
before marriage, her husband after marriage, and her son after the death
of her husband. She also had to observe the four virtues: to be faithful,
Language, Gender, and Chinese Culture 101

diligent, cautious in speech, and modest in manner. Throughout all of her

family roles, women's position was subordinate to the authority of men.
However, a mother's authority might be high, especially in the extended
families of the upper class, when she became a grandmother-in-law. As Lin
Yutang observed, "we still have plenty of matriarchs, even in the Confucian
households. "z3
The birth of a daughter was not a happy event, because a daughter
could contribute little to her family in terms of material resources or care
for the parents in their old age; above all, in most cases, they could not
continue the family name. 24 The only expectation of the parents was to
marry off a daughter well. The expression "commodity on which money
has been lost" (pei qian huo) is a common description for a daughter. As
the idiom goes, "a boy is born facing in and a girl is born facing out" (nan
xiangnei nu xiangwai). Naming the child often indicates the father's or
grandfather's wish or disappointment for the child's or family's future.
Many girls have names like "Little mistake" (Xiao cuo), "Second to a Boy"
(Ya nan), "Call for a brother" (Zhao de), "Little maiden" (Xiao mei), etc.
Girl's names are more likely to be negative and stereotypic, or to be names
intended to classify the child or to be used as a vehicle for changing cir-
cumstances external to the child herself.
Once she is married, a woman becomes the property of her husband's
family and is relegated to the world of household and community. The
wife is referred to by her husband as inside person (neiren), because she
is secluded to the innermost compartments of the home. She is defined in
terms of her husband, that is, in kin or status category terms. The terms
she is addressed by and the terms she uses to address others serve as con-
stant reminders of the hierarchical relations of gender, age, and genera-
tion. z5 The gender ideology is so persistent and pervasive that to this day,
people in rural areas still give their daughters the same name, or worse,
leave them nameless. Deng Xiaoping's mother is known as his mother.
There are only her sons' names on her gravestone, like most of the head
stones of Chinese women! 26
As we have seen, in traditional China a patriarchal, patrilocal, and
patrilineal society was sanctioned by Confucianism. A woman could not
inherit property and was trained to accept her lot unquestioningly. Mar-
riage was for and by family, not a romantic union of two people in love.
Women were expected to leave their natal homes as adults and lead se-
cluded lives in the environs of their husbands' homes. As a young bride,
a wife's position in the family was low and insecure. It was the major break
for most women from her natal family, friends, and community. Except for
the possible interference of the brother, control of the bride and the object
of her duties were transferred on her wedding day from her natal family
102 Fan

to her husband's. She could not initiate divorce nor remarry if widowed.27
Marriage was considered the single most important event in her life, be-
cause it was her career or livelihood (jiahan jiahan, zhuangyi chifan). No
matter what fate holds in store for her, as stated in the idioms, a wife
should stay with her husband--'`when married to a cock, one must follow
the cock," "when married to a dog, one must follow a dog"--the wife must
adapt herself to her husband's fortune and habits (/iaji suiji, jiagou shuigou).
Her role was--and continues to be--defined in terms of wife and mother,
but even that position is not secured by the mere fact of her marriage.
When she is with a male child, it means good (hao). Indeed, it is only after
a woman gives birth to a son that her position in the family is secured.
Most families put great pressure on the wife to bear a son or face the
humiliation of accepting a concubine or other forms of emotional abuse
and divorce.
Chastity was a required expression of female fidelity. In the Song dy-
nasty (960-1279), Neo-Confucian scholars' emphasis on chastity and oppo-
sition to widow remarriage was expressed in a frequently quoted phrase of
Zheng Yi (1032-1107): "It is a small matter to starve to death but a grave
crime to lose one's virtue." A virgin is described as clear as ice and pure
as jade (bingqing yujie). Therefore, women should guard the body as one
would a jade--to preserve one's virtue like a jade (shoushen ruyu). A widow
was told to preserve her chastity--to remain in widowhood and never re-
marry. She was never to lose her virtue for fear of incurring disgrace
(shishen). If a member of the gentry family was raped, the socially accept-
able solution was to commit suicide. There was a double moral standard
for men and women. Women should marry only once, men could have
many wives. Women were to follow one man to the end--to be faithful to
one husband till death and not to remarry after the death of a husband.
(congyi erzhong). A married daughter was perceived to be no longer the
responsibility of her natal family and was therefore considered a resource
lost, as "water spilt out" (pochu deshui). With the death of her husband,
young and childless widows scarcely had much to live for, for the rest of
their lives. Some of them found an alternative in suicide. Once an upper
class widow announced her intention to follow her late husband in death,
she would be honored by officials, admired, and die, knowing that her name
would be commemorated as a chaste widow. Monumental arches would be
erected in her honor. Occasionally, an oppressed woman would be driven
to take her own life as a form of protest and revenge. Suicide was almost
the single escape from the brutality to which Chinese women were often
submitted. Because a married woman's suicide brought her husband's fam-
ily public disgrace and, at times, retribution by her own kin, it offered an
abused woman both vengeance and escape.28 Fei Hsiao-tung explained:
Language, Gender, and Chinese Culture 103

"According to popular belief (a suicide) becomes a spirit and is able to

revenge herself; further, her own parents and brothers will seek redress,
sometimes even destroying part of her husband's house. ''29 "Death brings
not only an end to suffering, but power, the means to punish her tormen-
tors."30
In traditional China work was closely identified with home and family
life; the family was the primary economic unit. But in addition to cooking,
cleaning, and caring for young and old, women did engage in such work
as tending mulberry trees, raising silk worms, spinning, weaving, and sewing.
And although most women worked primarily at home, some also worked
outside the home--as innkeepers, herbalists, midwives, brokers, matchmak-
ers, and spiritual mediums. But such women were labeled as busybodies
(sanku liupo), and thus their critical social role was trivialized. It was the
women who remained private, secluded from other women and men, who
were upheld as ideal female role models. Most of the women were illiterate;
education for a female child was not only irrelevant, it jeopardized her
chance for a good marriage. Women were thus not only excluded from
taking the Civil Service Examination--the only regular avenue to official
power and the institutions of government bureaucracy--but were denied
the opportunity to receive any form of formal education. Only daughters
of the scholarly official families would have a chance to receive an informal
tutorial education at home. The Confucian scholars justified this depriva-
tion by saying that "women without talent are virtuous" (nuzi wucai bian
shi de). This cultural tradition still affects parents' decisions regarding
daughters' education in today's People's Republic of China. A century after
the Ministry of Education of the Qing government announced the estab-
lishment of schools for girls, the illiteracy rates were 12.68% for males and
28.96% for females, six-years-old and older in the 1990 Census. 31

THE IMAGE AND POSITION OF WOMEN IN

CONTEMPORARY CHINA

After the reforms, revolution, and the women's rights movements in

the twentieth century, Chinese women were described as holding up half
the sky (nuren zhan banbiantian) in the People's Republic of China.
Women's rights in the family were guaranteed by the Marriage Law of
1950. The Land Reform Act of 1952 promised women equal rights to land,
but land was distributed to the head of the household--generally a man--
and peasants were encouraged to fulfill their dream of setting up a house-
hold and making one's fortune, (fajia zhifu). 32 It is obvious that in a relative
sense women's development has advanced at a faster pace than that of
104 Fan

men, at least before the current period of market reforms. For 30 years
the policy of low wages and high employment gave urban women virtually
the same access to employment as their male counterparts. However, many
families have problems of geographical separation--husband and wife work
and live in separate places. Common living becomes difficult; when they
share time with each other on holidays, the husband often tries to be less
demanding and more accommodating: "henpecked" husbands (qi guan yan)
have emerged as part of the national idiom. 33
China has been passing through a period of transformation since the
implementation of the "Four Modernizations" policy in 1979. The complex
process of reforms since that year has begun to restructure the lives of
women in many ways. We have already seen some of the effects of the
one-child-per-family policy. The campaign slogan was "later marriages,
fewer children" (wanhun shaoyu). Ultrasound machines and ready access
to abortion have made it relatively simple for urban parents to guarantee
that their one child is a boy. Despite the fact that the 1992 law prohibits
abortion based on the sex of the fetus, infanticide continues. The prefer-
ence for boys and the result of female infanticide and gender-specific abor-
tion show in the disparity in the ratio of males to females: the 1990 National
Census showed a total of 599 million compared with 565 million females,
representing a 34 million gap between the sexes. In almost all other coun-
tries of the world, the sex ratio shows a marginally higher proportion of
women. The same census in China showed that out of a total population
of 1.2 billion, about 205 million Chinese over the age of 15 were single;
there were nearly three men for every two women in this age group. It
also indicated that while the majority of Chinese adults marry by the time
they turn thirty, 8 million people in their 30s were still single. The men
outnumbered the women by nearly 10 to 1 in this age group. This meant
that millions of Chinese girls did not survive to adulthood because of fe-
male infanticide, malnutrition, inadequate medical care, desertion and ne-
glect, resulting in high female mortality rates. The preference for boys has
been worsened by the insistence on having male heirs. "Female infanticide
is a form of policing and terrorist practice of control over women to keep
them in their prescribed reproductive role as the bearers of sons. ''34
The other issue concerning the relationships of power and inequality
that has structured women's roles and status is that the government pri-
oritized economic growth over gender issues. Now China is in a stage of
transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy, and the
transition results in complex socioeconomic developments in which women
face many problems, such as women returning to the home (funu huijia
lun), female workers losing benefits, young girls being forced to discontinue
their education, and the reappearance of prostitution and concubinage.
Language, Gender, and Chinese Culture 105

Women college graduates are being turned away from jobs for which they
are qualified. There is a marked decrease in women's participation in poli-
tics. The growth of the global market has benefited a few urban educated
women but impoverished the majority of rural women. Global economic
integration has made women, especially poor women, disproportionately
worse off. The new crime of the forceful abduction of girls and young
women has become so common that the government had to set up a special
task force (da guai) to crack down on it. The female companion who ac-
companies male customers drinking, singing, and dancing, appears in the
discos and bars in the large cities; these so-called "three accompany girls"
(sanpei xiaojie) are like bar hostesses in Japan. Home and motherhood have
once again become glorified and presented as women's path to complete
fulfillment. Expressions such as "two persons to guarantee the success of
one" (er baoyi) refers to the idea that the success of the husband is ensured
by sacrificing the wife's career. Women find themselves trying to absorb
changes and social strains similar to those brought about in the West during
the Industrial Revolution.
Another major impact of economic reform and modernization has
been the liberation of the mass media. Since the 1980s, much discussion
on gender has followed in the wake of widespread social and economic
transformation. Women have tried to reestablish and redefine gender roles
and relationships. There are public debates on femininity, masculinity, and
sexuality in public forums and the mass media. By the 1980s magazines
projected "an administrator/intellectual/professional-type image based in
the main on administrative cadres in education/medicine/sports/science re-
search, businesswomen and private entrepreneurs. The most prominent im-
age became women with personal achievements and success. "35 There are
increasing numbers of women entrepreneurs starting their own businesses
and managing their own companies. This group of enterprising, mobile,
independent, shrewd and successful business female executives is described
in a newly emerged image as strong women (nil jiang ren) in the new eco-
nomic system.
New forms of Western gender difference and commercialism have
been introduced. Some women have embraced a notion of femininity that
American feminists would find restrictive or as demeaning women into sex
objects by paying careful attention to fashion and appearance in order to
attract men. Chinese youths, on the other hand, protest by reacting against
the government policy of puritanical morality and isolationism and look to
the West, especially American movies, novels, and magazines, for an image
of sensuality and sexual liberation that they associate with Western democ-
racy. This is a far cry from 1950-1980 when it was almost impossible to
notice sex differences--everybody wore similar clothes, no one wore
106 Fan

makeup, or commented about personal appearance. In the 1980s, Western

approaches to advertising--using women to sell products--became current
business practice. As Tao Chunfang, director of the Women's Research
Institute said, "Everyone has benefited from the reforms, but men have
moved ahead at a faster pace than women. This is China, where the man
has always been the focus of the culture. China has glorified the man for
several thousand years. ''36 China Women's News held a forum on "The Im-
age of Women in Advertising" on March 2, 1992. Most of the panelists
agreed that the role for women in advertising is that of sex object. The
magazine also suggested that women appear in two stereotypical roles: the
good wife and wise mother or the modern flower vase--in the later case,
a woman is shown simply because of her physical attractiveness and sex
appeal, dearly in a decorative role. Women have thus been exploited and
denigrated by the media to enhance profits.37
Economic' reform has led to the decentralization and autonomy of in-
dustries, the establishment of private enterprise, and the elimination of the
cradle-to-grave state-insured "iron rice bowl" (tefanwan) employment sys-
tem. Enterprises are now expected to be responsible for their own profits
and losses in contrast to the 1949-1980 period. The reform of the employ-
ment system to optimize the labor structure began in 1987-88 and posed
a threat to female employees who held permanent positions. It was women
workers who bore the brunt of the drive to reform labor structure (yuhua
zuhe). A survey by the Women's Work Department, under the All-China
Federation of Trade Unions, of 660 enterprises from the end of 1988
through the beginning of 1989 revealed that in the drive to optimize the
labor structure, women constituted 62.5% of redundant workers, which
came to 21% of all women workers. Of the 660 enterprises, only 5.3% of
the managers said they preferred to hire women for jobs that could be
done by either sex. Many of the managers felt that the system of protective
benefits to women workers constituted an example of receiving government
handouts "eating out of the big pot," and should be abolished. The new
economy has made many people rich, but it also makes life more difficult
and frustrating for women.
The whole of Chinese society now focuses on profit at the expense of
equality, and as Communist socialist doctrine loses its influence, women
are losing the ground they gained in the 1950s. Women are discriminated
against in jobs, in housing, and in land allocation. Physical attractiveness
has become increasingly important. The new campaign to eliminate the
secure and permanent government job, the "iron rice bowl," will affect
large numbers of female workers.3s Women are the first to be fired by
struggling state firms, and the last to be hired by the vibrant private sector.
State figures show that women make up 70% of the 20 million workers
Language, Gender, and Chinese Culture 107

made idle by enterprise reform. They were instructed to go home and wait
for assignment or find their own job. "It's clear that there's been a great
reversal with the reform era. Things are going backward," said Wang Xing-
juan, who runs China's only nation-wide women's hot line, and was a foun-
der of the Women's Institute in 1988. She said that "as government
supervision wanes, employers--who are mostly men--are reverting to tra-
ditional, patriarchal ideas that women should not work and that female
hires will quit to marry or cost money for maternity and child c a r e . ''39 Un-
der Mao Zedong's rule, factories and offices had little autonomy, were not
much motivated by economic gains, and were obliged to observe central
guidelines against gender discrimination.
Mao Zedong planned his strategy for victory in China on the argument
that Chinese rural poor peasants, not the proletariat, were the "revolution-
ary vanguard. "4° Now in the 1990s, 70% of the Chinese population live in
rural areas? 1 It is in Chinese rural society that gender inequality remains
entrenched. In 1992 there were 109 million people in absolute poverty in
China, all of them residing in rural areas. The traditional attitudes toward
daughters persist in spite of a century of revolution. Most rural women
suffer from poverty, lack of health care, and are illiterate. According to
the 1993 census, the illiteracy rates for girls in western China are shockingly
high: Guizhou, 62.28%; Gansu, 81.48%; Qinghai 79.30% and Ningxia
64.88%. 42 Further, they have no access to good health care, professional
training, or higher education.
The rapid economic growth since 1980 has widened the gaps in re-
gional growth rates, earnings, and access to investment capital. For exam-
ple, average wages in Jiangxi province in 1993 were 47% of those in
Guangdong, and 44% of those in Shanghai. 43 This kind of social and eco-
nomic disparity exists both between urban and rural and between coastal
and inland areas. Most rural women in the transition period of economic
reforms are burdened with increased work as men move away from farms
and into industrial work, and young daughters drop out of school to help
their mothers. In 1987 the State Statistical Bureau conducted a sample poll
indicating that out of 220 million illiterates over the age of twelve, 156
million were female. 44 In 1988 the All-China Women's Federation, aware
of the serious situation, tried to improve the condition by initiating a new
activity in the countryside, "Women's Double Activity" (funii shuangbi
huodong), attempting to mobilize Chinese women to raise their education
level, learn science and technologies, and participate in the political and
economic construction of the nation. Three years later, the All-China
Women's Federation joined twelve other ministries and commissions to
sponsor a new project called "Accomplishing Heroine" (jinguo jiangong).
It called for urban Chinese women to become new women who uphold
108 Fan

high ideals and morals and are disciplined with confidence, self-esteem,
and self-reliance. They selected 4,672 women as role models.
The rapidity and contradictory character of political and socioeco-
nomic change in transitional China demands that women, to be truly eman-
cipated, find an independent voice, an effective repertoire of means of
cultural subversion that can resist the redefinitions of women's place now
underway because of the retrograde synthesis of traditionalism and west-
ernized commodification. In China, any such subversive cultural project of
resistance and transformation must come to grips with the repressive as
well as the liberating potentials of language as the bearer of patriarchy. It
is here that the historical experience of the niishu movement of the
Shangjiangxu region in Hunan province provides a glimpse of what this
task might involve.

N[.)SHU (WOMEN'S SCRIPTS)

Niishu suggests that writings by, for, and to women were powerful
sources of encouragement and mutual support in a patriarchal and oppres-
sive culture. According to the theory of muted groups, offered by British
anthropologists Edwin and Shirley Ardener, every society has a dominant
ideology that describes all social behavior. The dominant ideology dictates
thinking, social norms and expectation, supplies vocabulary, and reflects
the image of reality held by dominant groups. Suppressed subgroups, whose
views differ, may lack the language to express their own views or even an
adequate vocabulary to conceptualize their differences. They may adopt
the course of not airing those differences beyond their own subgroup to
avoid antagonizing those more powerful.45 Related to the theory of muted
groups is the way women have tried to create personal spaces that either
coexist with a dominant male social order or exist covertly in patriarchal
societies.
The only empirical data of this type of creative response in China dis-
covered so far has been the use of unofficial language, niishu (women's
scripts). This is the only Chinese writing system developed by and used for
women to communicate among women themselves. They kept it secret from
men for a long time until the 1950s. The dominant males, who use the
"official language"--the standard writing system--dismissed it as insignifi-
cant.
Chinese archaeologists, linguists, and feminists recently discovered
hundreds of poems, stories and letters written in the secret writing system
in a mountainous region of Shangjiangxu in Jiang-yong county in Hunan
province in central China.
Language, Gender, and Chinese Culture 109

Niishu first appeared in Beijing in 1958, when a woman presented a

note in niishu writing to a police station, asking for direction. No one could
read it, so they filed it away. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976),
women in Shangjiangxu in the Jiang-yung region discontinued writing in
the script for fear of being charged with practicing witchcraft because they
had written words, signs, and secrets.
When Gong Zhebin, an associate professor in Zhongnan College for
the Minority, began researching the script in the 1980s, he found only a
dozen elderly women who could read it and only three who were able to
write it. Tan Baochen died in 1989, Gao Yinxian in 1990, and Yi Nianhua
in 1991, after giving their collections of niishu to the researchers. Nfishu
was published by the joint effort of feminist scholars both in the People's
Republic of China and in Taiwan the following year. 46 Niishu's use declined
as women gained access to education in the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Only a few niishu writings survived, because the writing system was
passed matrilineally from mother to daughter. It is exclusively a women's
language. The originators wanted only females to write and handle it, be-
cause they considered it was the only appropriate form to tell their own
story. One woman wrote: "No man can record my sorrow, because he would
not understand my problem. ''47 They treasured the writing so much that
many women willed the works written in niishu buried or burned when
they passed away, so they could read it in the afterlife.
Chinese linguists have deciphered and transcribed hundreds of the
writings into standard Chinese. 48 As a phonic script, it used about a total
of 700 characters that could easily be adapted to a changing and modern-
izing vocabulary. The existing niishu vocabulary is about 100,000 words. The
language is phonetic but uses characters derived from standard Chinese to
represent the syllables of the local dialect. The standard Chinese writing
system has no phonetic base, using characters solely to represent meaning.
In nashu, however, each word has many meanings, depending upon the
context. The language is formed of a series of abstract geometric shapes
and reads vertically from top to bottom, right to left. Visually, a close con-
nection between niishu and needlepoint works can be seen. In traditional
China, almost all women worked at home; embroidery and weaving were
common handicrafts. When women in this area did their embroidery work
together, they taught each other how to read and write niishu. Usually they
shared their writing by reading aloud in the local dialect of Shangjiangxu.
Men could understand it if they heard it read aloud, though they could
not read or write n i ~ h u . 49
The writings of women's script can be summed up in the following
categories:
II0 Fan

1. Rituals: A temple was dedicated to a goddess called "Kupo" in

Shangjiangxu, Jiang-yung; here women held festivals for their goddess be-
fore 1949. Female worshipers wrote their wishes, prayers, and supplications
on either paper or paper fans and brought them to the temple to read or
simply placed them on the altar.
2. Poems or songs for amusement among women on the "Cow Fighting
Festival" on the eighth day of the fourth month in the lunar calendar. It was
a women's day, when women fed their cows, then took their favorite food
and met together at a certain place to sing, read their writings, and eat.
3. Tokens: of friendship. Women wrote to each other to make friends.
Psychologically, Chinese women depended largely on each other. In their
sex-segregated society, these women tried to build a culture with their own
values, customs, and written language.
4. Letters written between two women to acknowledge their sworn sis-
terhood. When two or more women met, if they liked each other and
wanted to form a long term relationship, they would send letters to each
other by a female messenger in nashu vowing their commitment to each
other. This type of non-kin, same sex network was quite common among
women in this area. "Sworn sisterhood" could involve females of the same
generation or whosoever hit it off with one another,s° Judging from their
letters, this relationship was typically life-long, intimate, highly emotional,
faithful, and mutually admiring.51
5. Biographies, to express loneliness, sadness, or a sense of lost after
the death of member of the family because of natural catastrophe or war.
Women either wrote their biographies themselves or asked someone who
could write to record it for them. The writer usually wrote something to
comfort the suffering person. The women carried their own biographies
with them, for therapeutic reasons, in times of emotional stress.
Many minority people who lived in Jiang Yong area practice to this
day "the not going to husband's home" (buluo fujia). The bride goes to
the groom's home for three days after the wedding, then returns to her
natal home and residence until the birth of her first child, but for no more
than four years. She will visit her husband's home four to five times a year.
On the third day, the bride's female friends deliver their writing of "the
third day writing" (sanzhaoshu) to her new home. Many essays have been
written under such circumstances. These writings usually express helpless-
ness and sadness over losing the "sworn sister" to marriage.
There are writings that reveal a mother-in-law's mistreatment of a
daughter-in-law, such as Yi Niainhua described in her own biography: "My
husband went to school. I did my best to serve parents-in-law. I have ob-
served 'the three subordinations' and practiced the four virtues. My mother-
in-law accused me of eating eggs without permission and punished me by
Language, Gender, and Chinese Culture 111

beating me. I cried for three nights and contemplated committing suicide,
but I could not bear the thought of leaving my young daughter behind so
I decided to wait for my husband to come back. "52
6. Historical records and epics: Women kept records of historical
events of their own time. One book was about the Taiping Rebellion (1852-
1865), describing how difficult it was during the war to walk with bound
feet and take care of their children and how much they suffered from the
deaths of their husbands. They had to cultivate land by themselves and
feed the young and old. It was the only history of Taiping written from a
woman's personal perspectives. They recorded their suffering during the
Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). Their young and strong husbands and sons
were drafted. Only the sick and dying returned home. The shortage of ag-
ricultural labor turned their farms into wasteland. They cried out desper-
ately to heaven and earth for help, but all in vain. They also recorded all
the major events of the People's Republic of China, 1949 to 1958.
Niishu provides much needed evidence documenting women's experi-
ences. The women in the mountainous rural area of Hunan province, just
like their sisters all over the world, had been excluded by traditional history.
Because women, especially women in remote rural China, had neither po-
litical nor economic nor military power, they were not a part of the official
history. History is made, after all, by the powerful. Niishu deals with
women's hopes, their fears, their constant struggle to get along with their
world and with their in-laws in the traditional Chinese society. The writers
and readers of niishu, as a suppressed subgroup, created their own writing
system to express their own views with an adequate vocabulary to concep-
tualize their differences from their oppressors. Niishu was their true crea-
tion, their own voice.

CONCLUSION

The analysis of Chinese characters, idioms, and semantic placements

provides the context for understanding the historical construction of gender
roles, images, and ideas that inform the oppression of women in Chinese
society. We have seen that language was crucial in the creation and per-
petuation of the Chinese patriarchal system. The physical structure of the
Chinese language testified to the continuing inequalities of gender within
Chinese society, the roots of which revert to antiquity. The Chinese writing
system that is by and for men serves to maintain patterns of behavior that
reflect as well as reinforce gender inequality.
We should recognize that social change creates linguistic and behav-
ioral changes. Linguistic disparities reflect real and sustained social in-
112 Fan

equalities that can and should be changed..There is no other alternative

for Chinese women seeking equality but to change the language and its
usages. Once Chinese women expose the falseness of existing male mean-
ings and encode their own language, a more objective social reality can be
envisaged and perhaps ultimately achieved.

ENDNOTES

1. Edward Sapir, Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1949; and Benjamin Lee Whorf, "The Relation of Habitual Thought
and Behavior," in J. B. Carol, ed., Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings of
Benjamin Lee Who~ Cambridge,: The M.I.T. Press, 1956-67.
2. See essays by Julia Kristeva, "Women's Time," and Helene Cixous, "Castration or
Decapitation?" Signs, Vol. 7, No 1.
3. Dale Spender explains: "Words help to structure the world we live in and the words we
have help to structure a sexist world in which women are assigned a subordinate position.
"She points out that both linguistic and economic determinism were used by the dominant
group to structure women's oppression. Further, she connects the sexism in the language
with sexism in society and argues that the language will not change until society does.
Man Made Language, (London: Pandora Press, 1980), p. 31 and pp. 7-30; Julia Penelope
discusses her view of how the structure of English and its vocabulary have been fashioned
by men who have not granted the power of naming to anyone but themselves. Women
learn from birth to perceive the world through the eyes of males. She declares war on
the English language, which she labels "The Patriarchal Universe of Discourse." She
believes "the issue, simply stated, is one of power: who has it and who doesn't. Men do
the things they do to protect their territory," in Speaking Freely: Unlearning the Lies of
the Father's Tongues. New York: Pergamon Press, 1990, pp. xx-xxi.
4. "The analysis of language provides a crucial point of entry, a starting point for
understanding how social relations are conceived.., how institutions are organized, how
relations of production are experienced, and how collective identity is established."
"Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference: Or The Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for
Feminism, Feminist Studies 14, No. 1.
5. Kathleen Canning, explains what is new and controversial about the linguistic turn for
social historians is the pivotal place that language and textuality occupy in poststructuralist
historical analysis. Rather than simply reflecting social reality or historical context,
language is seen instead as constituting historical events and human consciousness, in
"Feminist History after the Linguistic Turn: Historicizing Discourse and Experience."
Signs 19 (2)1993, p. 370; Joan W. Scott considers experience is a subject's history;
language is the site of history's enactment [and] historical explanation cannot, therefore,
separate the two. "The Evidence of Experience," Critical lnquiry 17, No. 3 (1991), pp.
792-93.
6. Margery Wolf, Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan. Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1972, p. 37.
7. Translated by Lin Yu-tang in My Country and My People. Heinenmann: Asia, 1977, p.
131.
8. Yang Zhen, a Confucianist of the latter Han dynasty (A.D. 25-220), as quoted in Van
Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974, pp. 86-87.
9. James Legge, trans., The She King, pp. 261-62.
10. Da Qing hui-dien [The Statutes of the Qing Dynasty], Chap. 291.
11. Lien Sheng Yang, "Female Rulers in Imperial China, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies,
Vol. 23 (1960-1961), p. 53.
Language, Gender, and Chinese Culture 113

12. See Edouard Chavannes, Les memoires histriques de S.e-ma Ts'ien. Paris, 1895-1905, 2,
pp. 406-442; and H. H. Dubs, The History of the Former Hart Dynasty by Pan Ku.
Baltimore, 1938-1949, 1, pp. 191-210.
13. Cixi (r 1861-1872, 1874-1889. and 1898-1908). See O. P. Bland and Edmund Backhouse,
China under the Empress Dowager, Being the History of the Life and Times of Tz'u Hsi.
London, 1910; Princess Der Ling, Old Buddha. New York, 1928; Daniele Vare, The Last
of the Empress and the Passingfrom the Old China to the New. London, 1936; and Harry
Hussey, VenerableAncestors, The Life and Times of Tz'u, Hsi, 1835-1908, Empress of China,
New York, 1949.
14. Charles P. Fitzgerald, The Empress Wu. Melbourne, 1955; Lin Yutang, Lady Wu, A True
Story London, 1957.
15. Carol C. Fan, "Feminist Movements in China," Literary East-West, Vol 12, Sept. 1996,
p. 3.
16. Lee Feigon, "Gender and the Chinese Student Movement," in Popular Protest and
Political Culture in Modern China, Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Elizabeth J. Perry, eds.
Boulder: Westview Press, 1994, pp. 126-128.
17. Belting Rev/ew, Vol 38, No. 36, (Sept. 4-10, 1995), p. 8.
18. Guisso, Richard, "Thunder Over the Lake: The Five Classics and the Perception of
Woman in Early China, in Women in China: Current Directions in Historical Scholarship,
Richard W. Guisso and Stanley Johannesen eds., New York: The Edwin MeUen Press,
1981, p. 50.
19. Juilie Jimmerson, Female Infanticide in China: An Examination of Cultural and Legal
Norms, No. 8 U.CL.A. Pacific Basin Legal Journal (1990), pp. 5%62.
20. Susan Greenhalgh and Jiali Li, "Engendering Reproductive Policy and Practice in Peasant
China: For a Feminist Demography of Reproduction" Signs, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 601, 634.
21. Susan Greenhalgh and Jiali Li, p. 613.
22. Chunquiu fan-lu, [Siku chuan shu], 11:5a.
23. Lin Yutang, p. 137.
24. Carol C. Fan, "Modernization, Christianity and Higher Education: Ginling Women's
College," in Peter Lin, ed., The Influence and Contribution of Christian Colleges~Universities
in Modernization of China. Taipei: Dong-hai University Press, 1992, p. 119.
25. Rubie S. Watson, "The Named and the Nameless: Gender and Person in Chinese
Society," American Ethnologist, VoL 13, No. 4, pp. 619-630.
26. Mao Man Deng, Wode fuqin Deng X/ao Ping [My Father Deng Xiao Ping]. Beijing:
Zhong-yang wen xian zhu-ban-she, 1993, p. 22.
27. Chastity was a required expression of female fidelity. In the Song dynasty, Neo-
Confucianists emphasis chastity and opposition to widow remarriage was expressed in a
frequently quoted phrase of Zheng Yi (1032-1107): "It is a small matter to starve to
death, but a grave crime to lose one's virtue."
28. Hui-chen Wang Liu, "An Analysis of Chinese Clan Rules: Confucian Theories in Action,"
in Confucianism and Chinese Civilization, Arthur Wright, ed. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1975, p. 47.
29. Fei Hsiao-tung, Peasant Life in China."A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze Valley.
New York, 1939, p. 49.
30. Wolf, Margery, "Women and Suicide in China," in Women in Chinese Society, Margery
Wolf and Roxane Witke, eds. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975, p. 112.
31. Tan Lin, "fu-nu jiao-yu yu ren-kou shu-zhi" [Women's Education and Population
Qualities], in Zhongguo funu yu fazhang [Chinese women and development]. Tienjing:
Tienjing shih fanda-xueh 1993, p. 409.
32. Vivienne Shue, Peasant China in Transition: the Dynamics of Development toward
Socialism, 1949-1956. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980, p.
99.
33. This phrase sounds exactly the same as "bronchitis" in Mandarin.
34. Sharon IC Horn, "Female Infanticide in China: The Human Rights Specter and Thoughts
Towards (An)Other Vision," in Columbia Human Rights Law Review, Vol. 23: 259, 1991.
114 Fan

35. Feng, Xiaotian, "The Changing Images of Women--An Analysis of the Contents of the
Magazine," in Chinese Women, No. 7, Soc/ety, 1992 p. 16.
36. New York Tmzes, July, 30, 1992.
37. China Women's News, March 20 & 27, April 3, May 22, June 5, 12, & 19, July 10 & 24,
August 2 & 21, 1992.
38. Stanley Rosen, "Women, Education and Modernization," in Ruth Hayhoe, ed., Education
and Modernizatiom" The Chinese Experience. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1992, pp. 155-284.
39. "Repressed Women in China Fighting back," Reuters in Honolulu Star Bulletin (August
11, 1994), p. A-7.
40. Mao Zedong, "Report of an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan," in
Mao's Selective Works, (March, 1927). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1953, p. 64.
41. Table 5: Population, Population Distribution and Population Growth, in The World's
Women, 1995: Trends and Statistics. New York: United Nations Publication, 1995, p. 63.
42. Zhou Wei, Zhang Tie Dan and Liu Wen Pu, eds., The Plight and Perspective of Girls'
Education in Western China. Qinghai Institute for Educational Research, 1994.
43. Chi Kin Lau,"South China and Hong Kong: Women Pay for Economic Miracle in China
and Hong Kong," in Shadows Behind the Screen, Maggie Paterson, ed. Hong Kong: Asian
Regional Exchange for New Alternatives & Catholic Institute for International Relations,
1966, pp. 35-69.
44. Jean Robinson, "Stumbling on Two-Legs: Education and Reform in China," Comparative
Education Review, February 1991, p. 180.
45. Ardener, Edwin, "Belief and the Problem of Women," and Ardener, Shirley,
"Introduction," In Perceiving Women, edited by Shirley Ardener. London: Dent, 1975.
46. Zheng, Zhiwei, "Introduction," in Gang, Zhebin ed., Nushu, [Women's Scripts]. Taipei:
The Foundation of New Knowledge for Feminists, 1991, p. 12.
47. Gong, Zhebin, p. 254.
48. Nushu, [Women's Scripts], published by the joint effort of feminist scholars both in
People's Republic and Taiwan--The Foundation of New Knowledge for Feminists in
1991.
49. For descriptions of the script, see William Chiang "We Two Know the Script; We have
Become Good Friends: Linguistic and Social Aspects of the Women's Script Literacy in
Southern Hunan, China" PhD. Diss., Yale University, 1991; Xie Zhimin, Jiangyong Nushu
shi mi [The Mystery of the Women's Scripts in Jiang yong], 3 vols, Women's Studies, Li
Xiaojiang, ed., Henan: Henan People's Press, 1991; and Zhao Liming, Zhongguo nushu
jicheng [Collection of Chinese Nnshu], translated and annotated by Zhou Shuoqi. Beijing:
Qinghua daxue chubanshe, 1991.
50. See William Chiang, p. 61; and Xie Zhimin, p. 1857.
51. Cathy Silber, "From Daughter to Daughter-in-Law in the Women's Script of Southern
Human," Engendering China: Women, Culture, and the State. Christina K. Gilmartin, et
al. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994. p. 52.
52. Yi Nianhua, "My Autobiography," in Gong Zhebin, ed., p. 31.