Anonymity of Women Before Enlistment

In the past, women in China, whether rich or poor, were denied any social status or human dignity. Not only have I read such a history, I have also heard many true stories of this kind.

A 6-year-old girl was about to leave home and go to work in a stranger's family. Unwilling to part from home, her parents, and her sisters with whom she had been together from morning to night, she cried and cried. Stroking her head, the girl's mother coaxed her: "Too many girls in our family. Besides, we don't have enough to eat. No girls in the other family. So they like girls very much. You are going to be a daughter for them there." She was hence led away. She kept crying all the way, turning backwards towards home the whole time until the thatched cottage of her family could be seen no more.

On getting to the family where her mother had said she was going to be a daughter, the little girl found that there were three girls already in the family. One of them said to her: "You're still in the dark. You're here to be my younger brother's wife!" The girl cried once more.

From then on, a great deal of strenuous manual labor fell on the shoulders of this 6-year-old little girl. She had to go outside to cut firewood, bundle it up, and carry it back home. Unable to do all this at first, she couldn't escape from being beaten. She also had to fetch water. Unable to carry a big basin of water, she was beaten again. In addition, she had to carry on the back a child one year older than herself, and if by chance she let the child fall, she would definitely receive another beating. Her fiance, four years older than her, complaining that his clothes had not been washed clean, would beat her by seizing her braids first. All this proved to be too much for the little girl, who had no choice but to run back to her mother's house. Yet even her own mother had no alternative but to give her a slight beating and then send her back. Thus she was beaten black and blue. She was full of pent-up grievances, but where could she pour them out?

There were some other child brides in the vicinity, and to them the little girl turned for sympathy. She would talk with them about her grievances and cry. Yet what was the use of crying? The 6 girls in her family were all sent away in this way, so were girls of other families around, and some were even younger than her.

Time thus rolled on. In the eyes of this girl the years were like an endless picture. When she was very little, the picture was colorful, but gradually the colours faded until the picture was almost dark. The wooden hook she used to carry the firewood had by now been rubbed shiny and the 6-year-old child had grown into a big 19-year-old girl. Yet her knowledge of the outside world was still rather limited.

One day one of her elder sisters running to tell her quietly that a women's organization had been established in their place and it was to make revolution. The girl couldn't fully understand the word "revolution," but somehow she seemed to realize that it would bring some changes in her lot. She went to it and from there she joined the Red Army and became a servicewoman. For the first time in her life she had a name of her own. Before, she only knew that she was called "Child" by others.

Among the thousand or so people conferred the title of general in New China in 1955, she was the only woman general. Her name was Li Zhen. Li Zhen's legendary experience sounds like tales from The Arabian Nights. Nevertheless, the humiliating female mark of "child bride" was

thus firmly printed in the curriculum vitae of the woman general. To fully understand Li Zhen as well as other servicewomen in the

Red Army, one needs to gain a clear idea of what a "child bride" means, for it constituted the beginning of their lives. Originally I thought the subject of child brides was simple. As the term suggests, a child bride is one who, like Li Zhen, starts to be a daughter-in-law of a certain family from childhood. But how did they get to the families in those days? Were they taken there or did they get there by themselves? I took up the phone and called a senior servicewoman who was once a child bride. Unexpectedly the call lasted for an hour and extended for another hour the next day. At last I came to see that even a book could be written on the system of child brides in China. The situation varied both in the South and the North and in rich and poor families. The child brides were sent away in different ways. Some were carried away the moment they were born, some were sent away when they were a few months old, some went when they were a few years old and some went when they were in their teens⋯Its popularity is beyond imagination.

"I was born in a scholarly family. Still I became a child bride. In those years girls were not regarded as their parents' own flesh and bones. They were like steamed buns which were thrown away if people did not want to eat them," said the caller on the other side of the

phone. She was getting on for seventy and was no longer in a temper when she said all this. Yet the shadow of childhood was still hanging over her. She told me later that the day we talked over the phone, she was sleepless the whole night. The young girls she knew in her childhood appeared one after another before her eyes: "The child bride of my aunt's younger brother went to our school every day, looking for clothes to wash. Her brothers and sisters also studied there, but they did not talk with her when they met, nor did they feel any loss of face. She was after all a child bride. There was no contact between them, for a married girl was like water thrown out.. The child bride could make no more than a few fen for washing each dress."

Our talk about child brides evolved on like TV serials, with each act beyond expectation. "Have you heard of girls being drowned?"

"Yes. Weren't they drowned in water?" At last there was something within my imagination: girl babies in water whose life ended without a struggle.

"No. They were drowned in urine. In our Zhejiang Province, there were two kinds of nightstools. The kind used for emptying the bowels was relatively low, whereas the kind used for urinating was higher, about the height of teatables of today, and could contain quite a few dozen jin of urine. These were mostly put behind the bed, and girl babies were thrust into them and drowned in urine after their delivery if their families did not want them. They were not drowned in water. As to how many girl babies were drowned at that time, no one knows. I think I was lucky enough to have survived."

"And there was a special tool for beating child brides." These words put my mind in a blank. I simply had to put aside the phone to get a pen and some paper and ask her to speak slowly.

"That was something made of bamboo bark and slices of castor. It could cause great pain when used to beat people, resulting only in some superficial rather than internal injuries. In other words it was used to beat child brides until they pleaded guilty, not to leave them disabled or dead. After all they were still daughters-in-law of one's own family afterwards. I was often beaten in those days and even today I cannot forget about it."

"Why didn't you run away?"

"Some did run away. One of my middle school girl classmates fell in love with her teacher. She was really bold. Afterwards she gave birth to two girls, but her mother-in-law didn't show up at all and didn't give a damn to her. The first baby was sent away to others the moment she was born as if the mother were a prostitute. So was the second baby. She wasn't taken home and accepted by the family until she gave birth at last to a boy."

In those days, each freedom-craving girl was heavily laden with

grief.

When we talked over the phone for the third time, it was already one evening after the Spring Festival of 1995.

"I've found additional material on child brides," said the senior servicewoman. She was so earnest. "You must have heard of Xiao Wangdong, a famous general. In an article about him there was a recording like this: a 4-year-old girl went to his family to be his child bride. By the time he left to join the revolutionary ranks, she was still too young for them to consummate. But she stayed on is his family to take care of his mother until the latter died of illness in 1947. The family was too poor to make funeral arrangements. Thus she sold herself, bought a coffin and some graveclothes buried the old woman. The child bride, who showed such filial piety, sold herself to a man with the nickname of "Black Door-God." This husband of hers would often beat and curse her, until General Xiao, returning home after liberation, helped her to renounce her marriage with the man. This is something that happened in our own time. But somehow I'm really upset by it. Imagine a woman selling herself as if she were an article! It sounds as if the story were far away from us, as if it were something that tool place in the Ming or Qing Dynasty. I've got the article here and can come and get it any time you like."

This was a beautifully moving story, yet is was simultaneously a story the cruelty of which bordered upon self-suicide.

What astonishes people most is they themselves, especially when they are enlarged and lengthened.

The TV program was on the special topic of women, " '95Half of the Sky." Dress models were coming on and off the stage in irregular lights⋯Topics on women today need no longer to be concerned with child brides. But we must not forget the story of the Red Armywoman Li Zhen and others like her, for that is also the source of our own lives. "To be a Red Armywoman first of all to gain the status of a human being, " said Lin Yuqin, Marshal Luo Ronghuan's wife and commander of the Women's Working and Fighting Battalion of the Army. This year she is more than 80 years old, and yet she still enjoys very good heath. To this servicewoman who has led a military life, war seems to have just occurred yesterday. Her mind has been tempered clear and logical by the long years: "Human beings aren't animals. He of she has blood

and flesh, thinking and the right to choose. Women in Old China, however, were like animals with flesh and blood but without thinking or the freedom to choose for close to 2,000 years. " She inquired in detail about my plan of interviews, urging again and again: "Don't fix your eyes only on the wives of senior officers, mistaking status for representation. Many of our servicewomen were ordinary people from their youth to death. It was they who won the right for us women to

be genuine human beings."

After the failure of the Great Revolution in 1927, the center of the Chinese revolution turned from cities to the countryside. The sparks of the revolution kindled again in Jinggangshan of Jiangxi Province. Part of the troops that had taken part in the Nanchang and Autumn Harvest Uprisings joined forces here, formed another force named the Chinese Worker's and Peasants' Red Army, and established successively the Jinggangshan base in Jiangxi, the Xiand-Gan base, Chuan-Shan base and the E-Yu-Wan base.

The Red Army in the mountain areas continued to spread the truths of the Great Revolution, arousing masses of people, establishing Soviet governments, setting up women's organizations, running literacy classes, and conducting propaganda on female emancipation. At that time, not only were there servicewomen in the organizations at various levels of the Red Army, women officers in the Red Army also served concurrently as women cadres of the local political powers. The development of the forces of the Chinese servicewomen in these impoverished mountain areas couldn't be compared by that of any of the later periods. There appeared then establishments of independent squads, platoons, companies, battalions, regiments, divisions of servicewomen and women officers of corresponding posts. The number of servicewomen reached a maximum of nearly 10,000.

Quite a number of servicewomen in the Red Army had been child brides. Some of them had run away individually, whereas others joined the army in groups. Lin Yuqin thus described the situation of that time: one day, Liu Baixing, one of the women soldiers ran into my room hurriedly and shouted towards me excitedly: "Battalion commander, platoon leader Zhang brought back a company! Go and see for yourself! " She took hold of mw and we ran outside. Between the walls of people I saw platoon leader Zhang, a woman, striding forward with her chest thrown out and followed by a crowd of girls and young wives wearing patched-over clothes. Some of them wore their hair in a bun or coil, some wore single braids, and others even wore necklets and bracelets. Though they didn't march in step, they walked in high spirits. This was a rarely seen force and attracted crowds of lookers-on. Platoon leader Zhang had been away especially to expand the Red Army. The place she went to was Enyang River. There happened to be a village fair that day and the streets were a sea of people, many of whom were child brides with baskets on the back who had come out to sell mountain products. The moment platoon leader Zhang stood on a table, some folks discovered that she was a Red Armywoman. But there were those who did not believe this and started

a debate among themselves. Hearing their debate, platoon leader Zhang said: "Dear folks, I'm a Red Armywoman.Some young wives in front of the table watched her with suspicion when they saw that her dress and

hair style were the same as those of men and shook their heads while smiling. They didn't believe her words until she bent over and let them see the holes in her ears. Then they all began to take interest in this Red Armywoman. Long engaged in propaganda Work, platoon leader Zhang knew what they were most concerned about. Using her own experience as an example, she said: "Folks and sisters! I'm from Huang'an , Hubei Province. My father, a long-term hired hand for a rich man, became ill as a result of overwork and died when I was 9 years old. When I was 12, my mother died, too. Unable to support me, my brother sent me away to another family as a childbride. Like the child brides here, I worked like a slave and yet was often cursed and beaten. As soon as the Red Army arrived, I became a Red Armywoman. In our army ranks, there are many armywomen who, like me, used to be child brides. Today, they have raised their heads and are no longer exploited by rich men or cursed and beaten by their parents- in-law." Her words struck a sympathetic chord among many of the child brides there. Immediately more than a dozen signed up and towards evening a force of around 70to 80 people was assembled. When she led them back to Dehan, the whole city was stirred. All at once our battalion was expanded to about 500 people. All the brands of pain left on women by the feudal society one could find on the Red Armywomen. Wang Zenan, Lin Yuqin's partner and political commissar of the Women's Working and Fighting Battalion, was a servicewoman with bound feet. Bound feet were the socalled "3-inch golden lotuses" eulogized by the feudal age. According to historical records, women's bound feet can be divided into 5 categories and 18 types. Feet binding, a sign of the vicious development of females being treated as playthings, not only deprived women of the ability to work but also left them subservient to men. Though we cannot be sure about the number of women with bound feet in the feudal age, we cannot help trembling with fear at the thought of the various acts of feet binding. Of the 10 toes, 9 phalanxes had to be broken. Such man-made cruel torture had to be borne by girls not yet of age, for grown-up girls would have feet too big to be made beautiful through binding. At that time women with unbound feet were not only looked down upon all their

lives but were also affected in their marriages.

Wang Zenan was desperate to break free of the shackles she was fettered by. The Women's Working and Fighting Battalion both sewed uniforms and transported provisions and materials to the front. With no cars and very few beasts of burden in the Red Army,the servicewomen had to rely on their legs. The gullies Wang Zenan tramped over, the mountain streams she crossed, and the trenches she strode across, were too numerous to be counted even by herself. People admired her contributions and sacrifices, but her idea was very simple then: despite all the hardships, she was at last a genuine human being.