Baby girls – and women – in China should be a thing of wonder, not pity
Kelly Yang says the Women’s March in Washington and around the world showed that millions, like her, value and respect women’s aspirations, and sent out the message loud and clear to misogynists
“It’s too bad you can’t have another baby because she’s a girl,” people said to my parents when I was born. It was the 1980s and China’s one-child policy was in full swing. My relatives looked at my pink toes and button nose with pity-filled eyes.
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That pity morphed into anger as I grew up. Anger at the fact that I didn’t partake in their theory, didn’t believe that women were lesser than men. Didn’t get knocked up and drop out of school, the way so many people gleefully warned. And then, when I did have kids, anger at the fact that my life didn’t just stop.
Nowhere is this sentiment more obvious than in the Shanghai “marriage park” where, every weekend, mothers with “leftover” daughters in their early and late 30s put advertisements up on umbrellas, hoping passers-by will help find them a match – any match.
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I was in Shanghai the day after the US election. I’ll never forget walking through the park listening to the mothers pitch their daughters to strangers. Even as they lamented their girls not settling down, I could hear the pride in their voice as they talked about them, how far they had got in their careers. And they should be proud; every single one of the women on the umbrellas had to get past a Luo Mingxiong to get where they are.
Watch: advert featuring ‘leftover women’ that went viral in China
