The hundreds of millions who have built modern China from the ground up – sweeping its streets, labouring in its factories and ferrying its goods – are often overlooked. But they refuse to go unheard. Last week, a food delivery rider won China’s top literary award. Wang Jibing, 56, first caught attention when a poem about his experiences went viral in 2022. The following year, Hu Anyan’s memoir, I Deliver Parcels in Beijing, became a bestseller. In the early 20th century, Chinese intellectuals sought to capture the harsh realities of working-class…
Tag: Women
For women in China frustrated by sexism, female comics are offering a release
Packed into the upstairs theatre of a small performing arts space in east Beijing, more than 100 people, mostly women, are giddy with anticipation. “Who did you come to see?” asks the MC, fashionably dressed in a faded denim two-piece suit. The answer is bellowed in unison back to him: “Fang Zhuren!” Fang Shaoli, AKA Director Fang (Fang Zhuren), has built a cult following in China in the past two years. Decidedly less fashionable than the evening’s host, Fang is dressed in a yellow hoodie and dark blue jeans. Her…
They were forced into marriage and abused. Now women facing exploitation in China have a glimmer of hope
Last summer, Xiaocao, a softly spoken woman in her 40s, received a tip-off that in Lüliang, a small city in China’s Shanxi province, vulnerable women were being forced into marriages. Along with another volunteer, she wanted to investigate. After leaving Beijing, the two volunteers travelled south for hours, on trains and in rental cars. A few villages turned out to be dead ends. But on the final day of their trip, the women stopped in a county where they’d heard about a woman with learning disabilities who was “married” to…
China has long sought to control women’s bodies. Increasingly, they’re making their own choices
Ever since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, women’s bodies have been the business of the state. In the 1950s, labour for state-controlled work units was organised according to women’s menstrual cycles. Then for decades, there was the one-child policy. Across vast swathes of the country the policy was enforced with a brutal severity. As well as fines for additional children, women were forced to have abortions and subjected to forced sterilisations. Now, women in China are facing new forms of pressure from the government as…
Being a woman in China is getting harder. But in Chengdu, female-only spaces are flourishing
In a small, unassuming bookstore in south-west China, a discreet community of women dream of a more equal future. Here in Chengdu, 42-year-old Shen Shen runs one of the country’s leading feminist bookstores. “The world doesn’t lack bookstores for men,” she says, surrounded by piles of volumes by authors including Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir and Chizuko Ueno. But Shen Shen must tread carefully. Although “feminist” is not quite a dirty word in China, “gender antagonism” – behaviour or speech could be seen as stoking division between men and women…
Want to be hotter? Try this one weird Republican trick | Arwa Mahdawi
Maybe she was born with it, maybe it’s Mar-a-Lago face Forget expensive moisturizers or designer clothes. Ladies, if you want a quick and easy glow-up, you may want to try Republicanism. This one weird trick of voting against your own reproductive rights will instantly make you 10 times hotter. That’s not my personal sales pitch, I should note. But it’s increasingly how conservatism is being marketed to young women. As is painfully clear almost one year into Donald Trump 2.0, Maga authoritarianism doesn’t have any meaningful selling points for most…
Single mothers in China find a new kind of partner – other single mothers
As divorce rates rise and the cost of living bites, single mothers in China are searching for a new kind of partner: each other. Across social media are posts from harried mothers seeking like-minded parents to share a home and child-rearing responsibilities. “I’m hoping to find another single mom to share an apartment with, so we can take care of each other,” said a popular post on Xiaohongshu, a platform known overseas as Rednote. “If our children are around the same age, that would be even better – they can…
Xi directs quashing of Chinese feminists even as he praises advances at women’s conference
Addressing dignitaries gathered in Beijing on Monday, Xi Jinping praised the “historic achievements” of women’s rights in China. In the past 30 years, the Chinese president said, maternal mortality rates had dropped by nearly 80%, and women were now participating in the project of national governance with “unprecedented confidence and vigour”. Xi was speaking at the global women’s summit, an event on Monday and Tuesday to mark the 30th anniversary of the historic UN’s world conference on women, which took place in Beijing. It was there in 1995 that Hillary…
‘Now it’s about personal happiness’: popular Granny Wang dating show belies China’s plummeting marriage rate
The crowd is sweltering under a red and gold awning, but Granny Wang has them rapt. Packed into the space in front of the 62-year-old’s small stage, and spilling out on to the wooden bleachers above, hundreds of people have gathered to hear Granny Wang – real name Zhao Mei – play matchmaker to young men and women at a daily show in a theme park in Kaifeng, an ancient city in central China’s Henan province. One man who volunteers to be set up comes on stage and tells Zhao…
Chinese officials warn women comedians that men are no laughing matter
Chinese provincial officials have warned comedians against stirring up discord between the genders, instructing them to criticise constructively rather than “for the sake of being funny”. The warning came from authorities in eastern Zhejiang province on WeChat over the weekend after a comedian referred to her allegedly abusive marriage in a performance that went viral on Chinese social media. Women’s rights are sensitive territory in China – over the last decade, authorities have cracked down on almost every form of independent feminist activism. Zhejiang’s publicity department chastised some comedy shows…