The past five readings that have been assigned in Ha Jin’s The Bridegroom have been nothing short of depressing in terms of the way that women are viewed and treated in China. In “An Official Reply” the gender discrimination was not quite as outright as in “Broken” however, it is still very prevalent. The author genuinely seems confused as to why a young woman would feel compelled to engage in sexual relations with an older man who has the final say in if her poetry gets published. Zhao says, “I couldn’t imagine that such a fine girl would allow an old man like Mr. Fang to explore her carnally”. It is appalling that being an academic in the 1980’s he still has no concept of gender and power relations. This young girl’s situation is similar to that of Tingting in “Broken”, who felt compelled to lose her virginity to a man in a position of power who pursued her. All of these situations could easily have taken place in the United States and it is important to recognize that gender discrimination can be found in all parts of the globe.
In “The Woman from New York”, the gender discrimination was more blatant, but also gave an interesting third person perspective. This point of view made me ponder whether females were included or if it was a collective male perspective and if that would make me think differently about the thoughts presented about Jinli’s life. Anyhow, I was appalled that Jinli was not hired for the tourist position when she was more than qualified for the job merely because there had been rumors spread about what she”may” have been doing when she spent some years in New York. This is where I think gender discrimination in China differs the United States. In the United States, a woman would most likely be hired for being fluent in Chinese and having traveled abroad there while applying for a tourist job. A woman’s personal life is much less poked and prodded as compared to China, where even the government knows about supposed rumors surrounding your name.
One reply on “Gender in China 2/18”
Thank you for writing about this. The story “An Official Reply” seems in many ways like the one that has the most direct connection to things that are happening today in our own national context, and yet no one brought it up in class. The author of the letter is clearly navigating the tension between a desire to expose a fellow academic’s abuse of power in ways that have too often avoided prosecution, and a desire not to do so in a very direct way that might in some way be to his own detriment. Although different in certain respects due to our own different cultural context, the same things continue to happen today, although hopefully current efforts and social media movements will at least lessen the prevalence of such abuses of power going forward.