Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
to the person, hand it over like a business card—using two hands and facing toward the
person. If it's for a wedding and there isn't an assigned person at the door to collect the en-
velopes, wait until the couple speaks to you and hand it directly to them.
Like most things in Beijing, gender roles fail to fall into a neat, all-inclusive definition.
Some women argue that they have equal lives, sharing housework and responsibilities hap-
pily with their husbands. Others disagree, believing they have fewer opportunities and
much less power than their male counterparts. You will see a few things that suggest an
homogenous society—female bus and taxi drivers are extremely common; various Beijing
enterprises, such as the ubiquitous SOHO complexes, are spearheaded by women; and wo-
men will often be seen roadside, working alongside men, paving and landscaping. And then
there's the behavior that would send a more blokish Westerner running in the opposite dir-
ection, such as a Beijing man's willingness to carry his wife's or girlfriend's purses around
for her like a personal bellhop. This not only is a public signifier that the two are in a ro-
mantic relationship, it also shows that the woman has at least some hand in the relationship.
Beijing women are definitely in a better position than their rural sisters. They are treated
more equally and do have more rights in the workplace. Yet when you look closely at what's
happening in the ranks, there are many holes in the system, particularly at the power-wield-
ing apexes of society.
Historically, Chinese women have never really had much power in the public sphere.
They were forced to live with cruel foot-binding practices, lived as concubines, and were
sold or married off. Confucianism frowned on powerful women and made them subservient
to their fathers, followed by their husbands, followed by their eldest sons, should they be
widowed. Mao came along and did manage to advance the role of women to some degree.
His policies pushed women and men together, and he proclaimed that women held up half
the sky.
In reality, this adage has proved to be more rhetoric than reality. Never, from the moment
the Communists took power in 1949 to the present, has a woman sat in the Standing Com-
mittee, the highest organ of government. In fact they hold up only one-fifth of the entire
Communist party membership, a figure staggeringly disproportionate to the near 50 percent
of the total population that they represent.
