Being 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
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.
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.
So we adapted. We learned the rules, fit in and rarely questioned the rules themselves.