I went to Xianshi to write a book. As a former sports reporter, I spent half my life writing for men, and now I want to write a bit for women.<\/span><\/p>\n[…] Auntie Wang is the woman I spent the longest time interviewing. Everyone in town knew that Mrs. Wang was being abused by her husband, Sun Tanjiang. The most brutal incident was when he pinned her on the ground, beat her, and then kicked her so hard she flew through the air. She was spitting up blood, but she was determined not to die, because if she did, what would happen to her two daughters? She only has two daughters, although she has been pregnant many times. When she talked about the pain of each miscarriage, I could feel my legs grow weak, but she always remained calm and composed. One moment she would be telling me about a very painful experience, and the next moment she would say, \u201cOh, I can’t chat any more, I have to go pick up the girls.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAuntie Wang was beaten all her life, but she never got a divorce. Instead, she developed a tactic to avoid the beatings. Every time her husband tried to beat her, she would go out and run in circles around an orange tree. Everyone saw it, but no one tried to stop it. More than once, I told her, \u201cYou can’t let him hit you again.\u201d And she said, \u201cThere\u2019s nothing I can do about it. He\u2019s just that kind of person, and this is just my fate.\u201d He beat her again last year, but she didn’t tell me. Had I been there, I would have definitely rushed over to stop it. The reason she didn’t tell me, Auntie Wang said, was because he didn\u2019t manage to land a blow.<\/span><\/p>\n[…] Liang Xiaoqing is the rare townswoman to protest domestic violence. She had witnessed domestic violence ever since she was a child, and knew instinctively that it was wrong for her father to beat her mother. After she became an adult, she told her father that if he ever beat her mother again, she would come to take her mother away. When Liang Xiaoqing went to work in a factory, she applied for permission to bring her mother to live in the workers\u2019 dormitory, and the factory said yes. She raced home to pick up her mother, but in the end, her mother refused to go, saying, \u201cI can’t just abandon your father.\u201d Sometimes Liang Xiaoqing can\u2019t comprehend why her mother stays: \u201cHe\u2019s clearly abusing you, so why don\u2019t you just leave?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nOne day Liang Xiaoqing told me, \u201cYou know, I never went to school.\u201d Thus I found out she had only been to first grade: it seems a male fortune teller had told her father that the family was destined to have no scholars, and advised him not to waste money on school.<\/span><\/p>\nLiang Xiaoqing draws well and has beautiful calligraphy\u2014you can see how much effort she has put into it. After studying cosmetology, she had the chance to work in Beijing, but she was worried about her mother, so she eventually decided to come back and open a nail salon in town. I have met her husband, who is a very ordinary man, but at least he doesn’t beat women. She is now able to support the whole family with her earnings. She also got her driver’s license and bought a car. Having a car means having freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n[…] <\/span>I think this is a book for everyone who cares about the fate of others. It\u2019s not my intention to provoke antagonism between men and women, because the plight of women is a structural problem, and violence by men is but one of the symptoms. When men\u2019s lives are steeped in misery, they too may be victims, taking out their frustrations on those weaker than themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n[…] There are no real feminists in town, at least none that I encountered. The townswomen are so fundamentally shackled by family responsibilities that none of them enjoy true freedom of choice, or the freedom to act solely in their own interests. Those things are a fundamental prerequisite for feminist consciousness. <\/span>[<\/span>Chinese<\/strong><\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This year, the United Nations\u2019 theme for March 8 International Women\u2019s Day was \u201cDigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality.\u201d In China, people marked the holiday with a variety of thought-provoking and creative events centered on women\u2019s lives, both online and off. This third part of CDT\u2019s series on International Women\u2019s Day 2023 focuses on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1084,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[99,20,14744,5,4202],"tags":[935,6858,74,227,694,16227,2903,6544,1023,17846,894,39,798,2258,4916,3371,73,1425,6275],"class_list":["post-692596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cdt-highlights","category-culture","category-level-2-article","category-society","category-translation","tag-books","tag-cdt-translation","tag-domestic-violence","tag-education","tag-family","tag-feminism","tag-gender-discrimination","tag-international-womens-day","tag-journalism","tag-lgbtq","tag-marriage","tag-poverty","tag-publishing","tag-rural-areas","tag-rural-women","tag-sichuan","tag-women","tag-women-workers","tag-womens-rights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n
Translation: The Women of \u201cSalt Town\u201d\u00a0<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n