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Audrey Jiajia LiBeing Chinese | Why Chinese women like me are done being quiet and ‘appropriate’
Chinese women are praised for gentleness. Our tone must please; our anger must be graceful. But a new generation is speaking out
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In China, girls are taught early to be “appropriate” – to listen, not lead; to speak gently, not loudly. We grow up believing that quietness is likeability, and likeability is safety. But something is shifting.
When Chinese writer Jiang Fangzhou said to me during a recent interview, “I can’t be waiting for some influential man to say, ‘I’ll give you an hour to talk about literature’. You can’t be waiting for a seat, for a microphone”, it struck a chord far beyond us. It was a generational declaration – for women who are done being echoes.
Jiang’s trajectory is familiar to many in China. She began writing at seven, published her first book at nine and rose to fame as a newspaper columnist at 12. Once celebrated as a literary prodigy, she was later consumed by controversy, drawing plaudits and attacks in equal measure.Advertisement
When I first interviewed her a decade ago, she was visibly weary of being labelled a “beautiful female writer”. “I still want to write a satisfying long work,” she said then. “But if I never do, being a ‘young writer’, a ‘middle-aged writer’ and one day, an ‘old writer’ is fine too.”
Back then, few of us – myself included – had the language to talk about gender or identity. Feminism felt abstract, even Western. We didn’t yet see how deeply the idea of female “appropriateness” shaped our behaviour. I mistook restraint for maturity and believed that to be articulate was to risk being disliked.
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So we adapted. We learned the rules, fit in and rarely questioned the rules themselves.
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