What the Chinese Don't Eat Read Free Page A

in the western media.
    ‘It’s true that for many male graduates, especially in the more developed regions, lack of power or money mean it’s hard to find a wife. There are too few girls in the cities and the quality of country girls is too low. There’s no way round it, we have controlled our population explosion but we have no way to stop people from trying to control the sex of their child, in order to “keep the family incense lit”. In the big cities the ratio of 20 boys to every girl is far, far bigger than the 6:1 we had originally reckoned on.
    ‘Of course the government has a firm policy against this; we had one before and we have one now. But how many people will really take notice? Who can resist traditional values, and parents who believe property is “an encouragement and reward for sons and grandsons”. You know Xinran, journalists discovering problems and governments solving them are two very different things.
    ‘We sent many officials to explain to people at the grassroots level that there is no distinction between the sexes in our economic and taxation policies, and that if we get an imbalance in the population, everybody’s “incense will go out”; some peasant cadres even tore down the houses of families who had had six girls and still wanted to have a son. But if you look at the banquets that are given at the birth of a son, and the personal damage and divorce cases that result from giving birth to a girl, it will be clear to you that in human behaviour, “It is easier to clean up the leaves than the roots.”
    ‘What is to be done? Relax the policy of population control? Xinran, has western so-called civilisation turned you into an idiot? You know we have always allowed an extra birth in the countryside, sometimes even three. There can only be the most rigorous implementation of the one-child policy in the big cities, and this is why our city boys can’t find wives. But can the few developed cities with their limited economic development support so many impoverished peasants? If China becomes like Somalia or the Sudan after we relax the population control policy, what will we do? Won’t future generations curse our name? Better to have young men with problems finding a wife, than leaving future generations of women with nothing with which to feed or clothe their children.
    ‘Don’t fret for no reason, Xinran; we Chinese won’t be left without a future, people learn best from their own hardships. Yes, yes, I agree with you, the price of this lesson is too high, and too painful.
    ‘Is your boy PanPan well? Don’t worry, you can have my daughter as a daughter-in-law, we have the “golden girl” that everyone’s trying to get. And how’s your book doing? Do the foreigners believe it? To be honest, Chinese women in the few generations before us have had it so hard that even their own children don’t dare believe it.
    ‘All right, go and get some sleep. I have to go to a meeting. Thank you.’
    When I put down the phone, I suddenly felt a great distance between China and the rest of the world. China has been striding forward towards today at such a quick pace that she has had no time to appreciate the historical scenery, to think about her fellow-travellers through history, or even to consider whether we should give our battle-weary bodies a rest, after exhausting ourselves with the inner and outer conflicts of the past 100 years.
    When I took up my pen and wrote down what I had learned, I found that there were none of my own views in it, but everything I want to say was already there. I thought about this English gentleman who wanted to have a son: maybe he believes in the traditional Chinese view that ‘there are three sorts of unfilial behaviour, of which the worst is to have no heirs’. But without a doubt, he needed somebody’s daughter to give him a son.

25th July 2003
    In the west, a kiss is just a kiss. If only that were true where I come from
    I am a Chinese woman.