That Night, I Felt the Preference for Sons Over Daughters More Deeply

I used to think that the idea of gender equality had taken deep root in China and that feminists online were being somewhat alarmist. In China, both men and women have hard lives. Feminists see only one gender's suffering and emphasize it. That may be valid, but it is not the whole picture. In any case, judging from my own experience, gender equality in China today had largely been achieved.

Something that happened yesterday, however, made me begin to believe that the preference for sons over daughters remains deeply entrenched in many places in China.

Last night I was staying alone in a city. It was already late, so I found a massage shop where I could get a massage and stay overnight: a fairly economical arrangement.

The therapist who massaged me was tall, 1.7 meters, and did not look particularly young. She was lively and liked chatting. Very curious about me, she asked all sorts of detailed questions. For a while, I wondered whether she was a postgraduate student doing undercover social research in a foot massage shop.

I asked her age. She said she was born in 2006.

I froze for a second, counted on my fingers, and finally asked: “Are you an adult?”

She said: “I've been an adult for six months, and I've worked here for six months too.”

I asked: “What do your parents do?”

She said: “My dad is a building contractor. My mom doesn't work.”

That caught me off guard, because my dad is a contractor too, and my mom does not work either.

Yet here were two people from similar family backgrounds: one massaging feet, the other lying back and enjoying it.

Curious about her experiences, I kept asking and learned her story.

She was originally from Anhui, but her parents had moved to Jiangsu long ago to make a living, bought a home there, and settled down.

Her family had always favored boys. Her mother and several aunts left school at a young age to earn money for her uncle's education. Her father dominated the household and never cooked or washed dishes. Favoring sons over daughters had become a family culture and tradition.

Nothing had improved in her generation.

Things were all right before her younger brother was born. He arrived when she was seven, and afterward her parents became indifferent to her. During summer holidays, other classmates went traveling, while her parents sent her to work. They thought it was nothing unusual: they themselves had started earning money at twelve or thirteen.

None of the good things in the family came her way. Her parents gave her little money, and their property had practically nothing to do with her. They even said she would have to earn the money for her brother's future bride price.

After junior secondary school she entered a five-year vocational college program, but the school was terribly managed and oppressive; someone even jumped from a building. She herself became somewhat depressed and dropped out after a year. In her view, working was more enjoyable than studying: she did not have to watch teachers' moods or listen to her parents nagging. Capitalists were considerably kinder than either teachers or parents.

So, despite her young age, she had already spent several months tightening screws in a factory and held many other jobs, earning her own living entirely by herself. That was impressive.

Her father was a little better: he often checked on her, transferred some money, and urged her to return home to work. She simply was not interested in the three- to five-thousand-yuan salaries available there. Her mother, meanwhile, had stopped caring altogether. Their WeChat conversation was blank.

Her experience left me deeply troubled. It was the first time I had felt so acutely the reality of son preference in China. I had heard similar accounts and stories before, but none had shocked me nearly as much as this.

Of course, this young woman's level of education was relatively high: in Jiangsu, attending a vocational college does not mean your grades were very poor. She was tall and had a full face, suggesting adequate nutrition; her parents had not let her go hungry. She had also traveled to Xinjiang, Chongqing, Northeast China, Shanghai, Beijing, and elsewhere, all on holiday. Her everyday living conditions were evidently not bad. But compared with her brother, the gap was indeed enormous.

She now earns over ten thousand yuan a month as a therapist, far above the local average, with considerable freedom. She has found a very good job. With her knowledge, intelligence, and abilities, I believe she will accomplish something in the future.

I wish her all the best.