November 1971 was cold in northern China, but there were always sunshine and blue skies. After working very hard for the People’s Commune during the harvest, my grandmother found herself with no food at home to feed her family. She gave me a sickle, a small basket, and told me, “Let’s go to find some peanuts, sweet potatoes, or carrots in the field.” I jumped and ran out of the door, exhilarated by the idea of going to the field -to me it was like going to the playground- plus getting some mouthwatering sweet potatoes. My grandmother tried hard to catch up with me. Even though she had bound feet, she could walk very fast.
We crisscrossed the peanut field digging everywhere, and found a small number of leftovers. Then, we moved to the sweet potatoes field. The soil was hard because it had been half frozen. We dug and dug for hours on end. Finally, a hand-sized sweet potato leaped out. The moment we were celebrating, a group of men charged with patrolling the farms appeared, holding big wood sticks in their hands. The leader of the People’s Commune yelled at my grandmother to stop and leave our “harvest” in the original place. Otherwise, they would accuse us of stealing from the People’s Commune, a big crime during Mao’s time.
My grandmother was standing tall on her 3.9-inch feet, solid, firm and strong. I don’t recall ever seeing my grandmother so dead serious. She stared at those men, and uttered just three words. “We are starving.” I don’t recall what else my grandmother said to them. I just remember that evening we had steamed carrots and sweet potatoes on the dinner table. I was five years old.
Like millions of mothers during the Communist Revolution, my mother had to work three shifts in a state-run steel plant. She did the same job as a man, but was paid less than male workers. This wages disparity was a government regulation during Mao’s regime, and Party cadres’ explanations for this was that “Women have a weaker constitution and gentler temper, rendering them unfit for strenuous tasks of operating heavy equipment or manning factory floors” (Helen Gao, The New York Times, 9/25/2017).
My mother could not take care of me, or afford babysitting service. Nor was there a place called pre-school. I spent most of my childhood with my grandmother. Although the village where my grandmother lived was only 150 miles away from Beijing, we had to travel six hours by train and four hours on a donkey carriage. Both my mother and grandmother had strong personalities – they worked harder than the men in their lives, but they were never rewarded economically and socially as they deserved.
My grandmother died in 1977; she was 66 years old. She raised 7 children, secretly worked in her small vegetable garden in a corner of her house before sunrise and after sunset, cooking food and sewing clothes for her husband and children and grandchildren, while working on the farm everyday like any man in that village. My mother was forced to retire from the steel plant at age 45; five years earlier than men in the heavy industry; 10 years earlier than men in the light industry or working in an office. The justification for this practice was that “women lose their strength and working ability earlier than men.”
Recently, Ms. Gao published an article on the New York Times, in which she discussed how women were treated in China’s Communist revolution. While criticizing the misconception of gender equality created by Mao’s pronunciation that “Women can hold up half of the sky,” Ms. Gao also defended the Communist Party by stating that “For all its flaws, the Communist revolution taught Chinese women to dream big.”
This statement is disingenuous at best and mostly preposterous,
Since 1949, Mao had led the Communist Party doing away with almost all Chinese traditions, regardless of whether they were good or bad. Mao’s pronouncement that “Women can hold up half of a sky” has some behind-the-scene story. When Mao started the New China in 1949, he set up an ambitious goal that in five or ten years China’s GDP would reach the level of that of the United States and other Western countries. To attain this goal, he needed a fast development of the heavy industry, and to develop the heavy industry, he needed millions of laborers. At that time, the population of China was 450 million. Enlisting women to work in heavy industries became a must. My mother came to Beijing from the rural area to pursue happiness, but working at a steel plant was her only option to make a living. That was not her dream. Nor did the Communist revolution teach her to dream big. It was, as my grandmother said, “we are starving.”
As Ms. Gao admitted in her article, “While the Communist revolution brought women more job opportunities, it also made their interests subordinate to collective goals.” I had a dream to go to graduate school when I was in China, but that dream was killed by the Communist revolution. In China, all students must pass the political test – Marxism, Communism, Maoism – before being admitted to pursue higher education. That was straight up indoctrination and brainwashing. I refused to take such a political test. Thus, I had no chance to get my Master’s degree.
Three generations – my grandmother, my mother, and I – witnessed the whole Communist revolution. We were not taught to dream big; we were taught to be obedient to the Communist Party. My grandmother died without dreams, big or small; her only “dream” was to have enough food to feed her family. My mother retired without “dreaming big;” her “dream” was to work more years, make more money and live a better life; it never happened. I gave up all of my dreams in China, among them the dream to further my higher education.
Four decades after Mao’s death, China still lives in his lie on gender equality. Sadly, many modern Chinese women still believe Mao entitled them to “hold up half of the sky.”
Reality is that in Communist China, women can only dream government-sanctioned dreams.