Rethinking the intensity of my mission against self-sacrificing. On the way to a speaking tour in Malaysia and Singapore, I found myself rethinking my normal position against excessive self-sacrificing. My professional call to action–“saving our inner tortoise”– is finding simple ways to reduce the overwhelm and exhaustion many of us feel these days. This bias has led me to champion emotions of acceptance, grace, satisfaction and wholeheartedness. However, on my flight reading “The Good Women of China—Hidden Voices” by Xinran added awe and reluctant admiration for those willing to sacrifice almost everything for the sake of something or someone they love. Although not giving up my mission, I truly appreciate the expansion of my understanding and appreciation of women’s self-sacrificing and its necessary emotions of resilience, numbness, and courage that some women have in the face of disturbing and horrific experiences when trust is betrayed.
While reading I was reminded of those times my own heart ruled my head with blind trust or lack of prudence. Yet as these Chinese women found, the cost was somehow acceptable or worth it to be true to our innate caring and hope for the best natures. Rather than chiding them for their lack of wisdom, I now applaud them for their strength of spirit. I offer these excerpts from the book to whet your appetite for reading about the pre-dispositions of caring in the female (and male) genders and perhaps find places to decrease or even increase your own self-sacrificing pattern.
~~~
From the back cover of “The Good Women of China-Hidden Voices” by Xinran.
When Deng Xiaoping’s efforts to ‘open up’ China took root in the late 1980’s, Xinran recognized an invaluable opportunity. As an employee for the state radio system, she had long wanted to help improve the lives of Chinese women. But when she was given clearance to host a radio call-in show, she barely anticipated the enthusiasm it would quickly generate. Operating within the constraints imposed by government censors, Words on the Night Breeze sparked a tremendous outpouring, and the hours of tape on her answering machines were soon filled every night. Whether angry or muted, posing questions or simply relating experiences, these anonymous women bore witness to decades of civil strife, and of halting attempts at self-understanding in a painfully restrictive society. In this collection, by turns heartrending and inspiring, Xinran brings us the stories that affected her most and offers a graphically detailed, altogether unprecedented work of oral history.
~~~
Xiran: “A man battering his wife or beating his children is considered ‘to be putting his house in order’ by many Chinese.” … I received no praise for the rescue of this girl, only criticism for ‘moving the troops about and stirring up the people’ and wasting the radio station’s time and money. I was shaken by these complaints. A young girl had been in danger and yet going to her rescue was seen as ‘exhausting the people and draining the treasury’.
Just what was a woman’s life worth in China? This question began to haunt me.
Carol’s thoughts… In my coach training, we studied discourses (beliefs and philosophies that transcend centuries and influence decisions and laws.) Although this way of thinking about beating women and children turned my stomach, I realized my reaction was from my own American discourse of equality and human rights. That is not yet so in China. While I can champion change with my actions and votes, I cannot hold others accountable for a promise never made by them.
Carol’s Coaching Corner: Where in life do you suffer because you are expecting others to change by holding them accountable for a promise they never made? (Hint: Check into your “shoulds”.)
~~~
Carol’s thoughts… Many of us, especially in the U.S., like the idea of being unique and original. However, we do not arrive on this planet with a blank slate. Like it or not, our choices are shaped by our emotional, personal, social and cultural history.
Xiran: From the matriarchal societies in the far distant past, the position of Chinese women has always been at the lowest level. They were classed as objects, as a part of property shared out along with food, tools and weapons. Later on they were permitted to enter the men’s world, but they could only exist at their feet—entirely reliant on the goodness or wickedness of a man. If you study Chinese architecture, you can see that many long years passed before a small minority of women could move from the side chambers of the family courtyard (where tools were kept and the servants slept) to chambers beside the main rooms (where the master of the house and his sons lived).
Chinese history is very long, but it has been a very short time since women have had the opportunity to become themselves and since men have started to get to know them.
In the 1930’s, when Western women were already demanding sexual equality, Chinese women were only just starting to challenge male-dominated society, no longer willing for their feet to be bound, or to have their marriages arranged for them by the older generation. However, they did not know what responsibilities and rights were; they did not know how to win for themselves a world of their own. They searched ignorantly for answers in their own narrow space, and in a country were all education was prescribed by the Party. The effect that this has had on the younger generation is worrying. In order to survive in a harsh world, many young people have adopted the hardened carapace of Jin Shuai and suppressed their emotions.
~~~
Xinran: Do you consider yourself to be a good woman? A young science student [Jin Shuai] responds ‘Me?’ She appeared irresolute for a moment, then replied firmly, ‘No’. My curiosity was piqued. Why I asked. ‘I don’t have the necessary gentleness and conscientiousness. Good Chinese women are conditioned to behave in a soft, meek manner’.
Xinran:
- What philosophy do women have?
- What is happiness for a woman?
- And what makes a good woman?
~~~
Xinran, I seem to lack the courage to tell my own story. I want very much to tell people what kind of family I live in. I also want to hear my own story, because I have never dared look back at the past before, afraid that my memories might destroy my faith in life. I once read that time heals everything, but more than forty years haven’t taken away my hatred of regret; they have only numbed me.
At home, we have more than enough of everything we need. Most days, someone comes into do the cleaning and brings fresh flowers. However, my home is merely a display case for household objects: there is no real communication in the family, no smiles or laughter. When we are alone with each other, all you hear are the noises of animal existence: eating, drinking and going to the toilet. Only when there are visitors is there a breath of humanity.
In this family, I have neither a wife’s rights nor a mother’s position. My husband says I’m like a faded grey cloth, not good enough to make trousers out of, to cover the bed, or even to be used as a dishcloth. All I am good for is wiping mud off feet. To him, my only function is to serve as evidence of his “simplicity, diligence and upright character” so he can move on to higher office.
‘These were his very words to me, Xinran—he said them to my face’. … I thought of leaving him countless times. I wanted to rediscover my love of music and rhythm, to fulfill my longing for a true family, to be my old free self—to rediscover what it meant to be a woman. But my husband said that if I left him, he would make life so difficult for me that I’d wish I were dead. He would not stand for jeopardizing his career, or making him a target for gossip. I knew he would be as good as his word: over the years not one of his political enemies has escaped his revenge. … I cannot escape.
… You may wonder why I believe I don’t have the position of a mother. The children were taken away from me soon after they were born and sent to the army nursery because the Party said they might affect the “commanders”—their father’s—work.
…When they got a little older, their father’s position brought them many special rights that other children didn’t have. This can influence growing children for the worse, giving them a lifelong feeling of superiority and the habit of contempt for others. They regarded me as an object of contempt too.
… I tried to teach them how to be good, using my ideas and experiences, hoping maternal love and care would change them. If my own husband did not see me as worthy of respect or love, what chance did I have with my children? They did not believe that I had been worth something’.
Carol’s Coaching Corner: What is the cost of muteness?
~~~
Xiran: …the inertia of tradition made it hard for any one of us to fix on an independent course in life…general opinion held that ‘lack of talent in a woman is a virtue’.
At that time women obeyed the “Three Submissions and the Four Virtues: submission to your father, then your husband and, after his death, your son; the virtues of fidelity, physical charm, propriety in speech and action, diligence in housework.” For thousands of years women had been taught to respect the aged, be dutiful to their husbands, tend the stove and do the needlework, all without setting foot outside the house. For a woman to study, read and write, discuss affairs of state like a man, and even advise men, was heresy to most Chinese at that time.
‘For a long time, I asked myself how this could have happened. How could I have been “married off by the revolution”? For the last forty years, I have lived numbly in humiliation. My husband’s career is everything to him; women only fulfill a physical need for him, no more. He says, “If you don’t use a woman, why bother with her?”
‘Sorry, Xinran, I’ve only been thinking of myself, talking away like this. Did your machine get it all? I know women talk too much, but I so seldom have the opportunity or any desire to speak; I live like an automaton. At last, I’ve been able to speak without fear. I feel lighter. Thank you.”
~~~
Carol’s Coaching Corner:
- Is there a place in your life where you have been mute too long?
- Is your “self “worth enlarging? Is it time to step on your path?
- Have you stayed too long? Is it time to leave what you have been thinking or doing for your soul’s safety or sanity?
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. I’d enjoy hearing what touched you.
