Abstract
Another story of marital dysfunctions in a materially wealthy and upwardly mobile family shows how women both bear the burden of familial sexism and pioneer untraveled paths. Before her healing began, Dong bore the burden of her mother’s tragedy only at a distance. Even her companionship with her mother during her father’s affair was a reluctant one. But after becoming a Christian, Dong looked back with regret about her coldness and indifference toward her mother when she was in deep misery. What the Christian faith also did was to give her the strength to more actively seek healing for her mother.
(Narration by Dong, age forty one, founding owner of a private day care center)
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Notes
- 1.
A way that Chinese people refer to local gentry (xiangshen) who were philanthropic toward the poor.
- 2.
During the land reform in rural China, residents were classified into four groups: landlords (dizhu), rich peasants (funong), middle peasants (zhongnong) and poor peasants (pinnong). The last category was considered of good origin (chushen hao). Millions of landlords were executed.
- 3.
Bill Bishop, “The Chinese Have $1.5 Trillion in Hidden Income,” Forbes, August 13, 2010. https://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2010/08/13/the-chinese-have-1-5-trillion-in-hidden-income/#34ee53b4ec7c Anthony Kuhn, “Lure of China’s Gray Economy Reached Rich and Poor,” National Public Radio, January 2, 2014. https://www.npr.org/2014/01/02/259121416/gray-income-makes-up-an-estimated-12-of-chinas-gdp
- 4.
The transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong as a colony of the United Kingdom to a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China took place on July 1, 1997. The National College Entrance exam (gaokao) took place in early July of that same year.
- 5.
In China, students who apply for universities need to do so according to the quotas different universities allocated for a local region.
- 6.
In China, if someone in an extended household gained prominent power and status, he or she becomes responsible for the career advancement and economic benefits for other members in this family, especially young people in the next generation.
- 7.
Popular destinies for young people to develop their careers. Working in these cities also becomes status symbols.
- 8.
Hsiung Ping-chen, “The Flickering Fire: Retrospective Adoption and the Creation of Family Memory in Late Imperial China,” in Lee Cheuk-yin and Hsiung Ping-chen, eds., Evolving Cultural Memory in China and her Neighbours (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Educational Publishing Co., 2008), pp. 20–62.
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Ma, L. (2019). Little Comfort. In: Christianity, Femininity and Social Change in Contemporary China. Palgrave Studies in Oral History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31802-4_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31802-4_4
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