Character for Woman

A recent post on the popular Chinese forum Tianya has caused a sensation online. Author and lawyer Ye Mantian rallied against the structure of many vulgar Chinese characters as containing elements in reference to women.

Ye Mantian asked that such gender biased and often offensive characters are replaced with gender-neutral forms. For example, the character for rape is written as “姦”, or simply the three characters for women (女) stacked together.

In her post, Ye stated that “during my elementary school years, looking through the dictionary left me with many impressions – many dirty, wretched, negative meaning words contain the radical “女”[female], and this type of [character] structure is not fair to women.”

Ye listed 16 characters that are particularly offensive and gender biased; these characters are: “娱”[amusement], “耍”[playful], “婪”[greedy], “嫉”[envy], “妒”[envy], “嫌”[dislike], “佞”[to flatter], “妄”[presumptuous], “妖”[evil], “奴”[slave], “妓”[prostitute], “娼”[prostitute], “奸”[rape], “姘”[have an affair], “婊”[prostitute] and “嫖”[prostitute].

Ye went on to say that “to construct a egalitarian society where both men and women can mutually respect one another, we must respect our mothers, because she gave us nurturing kindness; we must respect our wives, because they and their husbands brings the household together, weathering through the highs and lows in life; we must love our daughters, because they are the future of our nation and people.”

Do you think Chinese characters should be changed?

The bar was due to open on World AIDS Day on December 1^st with the support of the local government; however, extremely negative reaction from the general public and intense media attention had forced the bar to close before opening.  Some volunteers at the bar stated that they were already ousted during trial operation in November even though they were not gay; some of them even had their pictures and names posted in the news.

Homosexuality in China was considered a mental illness until 2001 and today, it is still an extremely sensitive issue.  According to AFP, “gay men and women find it difficult to come out to their friends and family. One of the reasons lies in the nation’s one-child policy, which makes parents rely on their only child to marry and produce grandchildren.”

The newly opened gay bar aims to provide a place where homosexuals can meet in a relaxed atmosphere and get information about HIV/AIDS prevention.

According to China Daily, homosexuals in China came to around 30 million in 2005 but this figure is not reliable because few were willing to acknowledge their sexuality.

Do you think by opening a gay bar, the government has taken a correct step towards recognizing homosexuality?

It turned out the “flower” and “blossom” is not the blue roses but atomic bomb explosions.  At the end of the post, the post stated:

这花很漂亮吧？唉，咱中国，就是每办法开得了啊。呵呵……晓得他日本是咋么个开发的呵？同志们，是爱国青年的支持支持，在这里谢谢了。
Translation: Aren’t these flowers beautiful?  Too bad China will never see them bloom on its soil.  Haha…don’t know how the Japanese developed them.  Comrades, support this post if you are a patriotic youth, thank you.

At the end of the post, the author listed a few options for the readers to vote on, and they are:

Many posts/votes on Kaixin001 are advocating killing the Japanese by so-called “爱国人士” or patriots.  Most of these “patriots” are born in the late 70s, 80s, and early 90s. 

Why the Hate?

According to Matthew Forney, the hate is learned and taught in schools and in the media.

Chinese kids can be forgiven for thinking Japan is a nation of “devils,” a slur used without embarrassment in polite Chinese society. They were raised to feel that way, and not just through cartoons. Starting in elementary school children learn reading, writing and the “Education in National Humiliation.” This last curriculum teaches that Japanese “bandits” brutalized China throughout the 1930s and would do so today given half a chance. Although European colonial powers receive their share of censure, the main goal is keeping memories of Japanese conquest fresh. Thousands of students each day, for instance, take class trips to the Anti-Japanese War Museum in Beijing to view grainy photos of war atrocities—women raped and disemboweled, corpses of children stacked like cordwood. As one 15-year-old girl in a blue and yellow school uniform, Ji Jilan, emerged from a recent visit to the gallery, she told a TIME correspondent: “After seeing this, I hate Japanese more than ever.”

Has Anything You’ve Done Made Your Life Better?

I remember a scene from the movie American History X where Bob Sweeney, teacher and mentor of the incarcerated Derek Vinyard, ask Vinyard to ask the right question:

There was a moment… when I used to blame everything and everyone… for all the pain and suffering and vile things that happened to me, that I saw happen to my people. Used to blame everybody. Blamed white people, blamed society, blamed God. I didn’t get no answers ’cause I was asking the wrong questions. You have to ask the right questions…Has anything you’ve done made your life better?

Perhaps these so-called patriots should ask the same question, has anything they’ve done made the relationship between China and Japan better?  Has anything they’ve done improved the relationship between the two people?  Ignorant hate is just a waste of time that will not better anyone.