Her mother undid Liang Jieyun’s braids, combed out the strands and pinned them into a bun. When her friends put up their hair, they wore the red clothing of brides. However, as Liang left her girlhood behind and stepped across the family threshold, she was embarking on a lifelong commitment to remain single.
At 85, Liang is a rare survivor of a custom stretching back to the early 19th century in parts of southern Guangdong Province. Women here could vow to remain a “self-combed woman,” or zishunu, (自梳女) leaving their parents’ home to work without marrying.
“If I hadn’t become a self-combed woman, the landlord would have forced me into marriage,” she said.
Pretty girls were often forcibly taken as wives or concubines. Two of her friends killed themselves after it happened to them.
Becoming a zishunu gave women an unusual degree of independence in a world that allowed them little education, voice or freedom, but it came at a heavy price. They toiled in factories or other people’s homes to support their families. Women who broke their pledge of celibacy were supposed to kill themselves, though by Liang’s era, such expectations had largely disappeared.
Shatou Village, Shunde, was once a center of this practice. Down an alleyway, tucked behind the high modern white-tiled homes, lies a two-story gray building with an elegant courtyard before it. In front of its gate, mulberry trees sprawl inside a red-brick wall. “The Hall of Ice and Jade” — named after the saying “as pure as jade, as unsullied as ice” — was built to shelter these women in old age, although it is now a museum.
Liang is tiny — perhaps 142m — and fine-boned. She sits on a bench beside Huang Li-e, a 90-year-old with a mischievous smile and an aptitude for teasing. They have never had husbands, children — or second thoughts.
“No regrets,” they say in unison.
“A lot of men chased after me,” Liang added, with a shooing motion: “I told them to go away.”
The custom was a form of “marriage resistance” in the Pearl River delta. It may have emerged because Shunde was a silk production center, giving women opportunities in the factories. The area also placed a heavy emphasis on female chastity, said Ye Ziling, (葉紫鈴) who has interviewed many survivors, possibly helping to ensure the women’s vows were respected.
While they chose to become “self-combed,” even running away to do so when their parents disapproved, most came from poor households.
“Often, their families couldn’t offer good dowries. Their status would be even lower than an ordinary girl’s in their new family. They were also the eldest daughters and might already be the main laborer. Their siblings had not grown up to replace them and, if they married, the main income source was gone,” Ye said.
Others became self-combed because factories refused to hire those they feared might marry and give birth.
“Women were afraid of marrying a bad man,” said Liang, adding that local men gambled and smoked opium. “If you got married, you had to give birth to children and raise them and work very hard for the family.”
Brides joined their husband’s family, at the bottom of the hierarchy.
“All their labor went to the in-laws and became their duty. The in-law family would never be grateful — it was what was supposed to be done,” Ye said.
In contrast, self-combed women could enjoy the gratitude of brothers and take pride in their contribution.
Because of their long working hours, factory workers often slept by their machines. In Zhaoqing, another town in the Pearl River delta, they lived as a community. Some are thought to have formed romantic or sexual relationships.
When the Wall Street crash led to the collapse of the silk industry, many went to Singapore as servants. Huang spent decades there, sending money home to her brother and nephew.
“We never thought about ourselves,” she said.
While some see the custom as a challenge to Confucian patriarchy, others think it is more complex.
“Superficially, it looks very different to what we thought about traditional Chinese women. People tend to think it was a phenomenon of rebellion... However, almost all emphasized the relationship with their natural family and very traditional values such as filial piety,” Ye said.
The practice began to die out as the clan system disintegrated amid the turmoil of the 1930s and 1940s. The marriage law passed by the new communist state in 1950 rang its final death knell by raising the minimum marital age, banning polygamy and forced or arranged matches, and granting women equality.
Some of Liang’s peers married, but most of those who had taken the vow continued to live by it, sending home half their income or more.
With no pensions, some adopted daughters to look after them in their old age. Others sent home part of their wages to build the Hall of Ice and Jade. It still holds the memorial tablets of the dead. However, the last resident moved out years ago. Now Shatou’s 10 remaining zishunu live with nephews and nieces or in care homes, with government allowances. Some of the 12 children Liang raised for employers come to visit her.
She feels no envy for today’s women.
“It’s still hard to find a good man,” Liang said. “If a man is poor, his wife will have to struggle; if a man is rich, he may take a mistress,” she said.
She leaned forward.
“Good for you, you have an education and you’ve traveled,” she said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese