Just over a year ago, Xi Jinping told China’s national women’s congress that the Communist party must “actively foster a new type of marriage and childbearing culture”. For the last two years, there has been not one woman on the 24-strong politburo (no women have ever reached its standing committee, China’s most senior political body). Activism on women’s issues, as in other areas, has been pushed underground.
Yet while the political environment is dismal, the unexpected success of a low-budget comedy speaks volumes about the way that feminism has gone mainstream in China. This winter’s surprise hit has been Her Story, the tale of a do-it-all single mother’s unexpected friendship with an artsy, sentimental neighbour, which topped the Chinese box office.
Some compared it to the Hollywood film Barbie: though less lavish, both use comedy to frame feminist critique. But Her Story does not pull its punches. It tackles issues including porn, consent, menstruation and single motherhood. We see acts of kindness between female strangers, while the male characters are largely hopeless and hung up on proving their manliness. Even the trenchant preteen daughter must battle toxic masculinity at school. In one excruciating scene, an ex-husband tries to flaunt superior feminist knowledge to outdo a rival: “Have you read Chizuko Ueno?” he demands.
That line is greeted with snorts of laughter from female viewers – Ueno, a Japanese feminist, has become a bestseller in China with books such as Misogyny and Feminism from Scratch. Her popularity reflects an upsurge of interest in feminist ideas, seen as well in a growing number of podcasts. But entertainment offers a convenient marriage: it’s easier to address sensitive issues when they come wrapped in a drama and more appetising for the unconverted, while production companies are realising that young, financially independent women are a lucrative market. Other recent hits include Yolo, about a reclusive woman who reinvents herself as a boxer, and Like a Rolling Stone, inspired by the real-life story of a middle-aged woman who left behind her unhappy marriage to embark on an epic road trip.
In the early 2010s, Chinese feminists challenged everything from domestic violence to unfair university admissions procedures and the lack of facilities for women with attention-grabbing, often funny stunts such as Occupy the Men’s Toilets. The remarkable movement, later captured in Leta Hong Fincher’s book Betraying Big Brother, didn’t last long: in 2015, a dramatic crackdown culminated in the detentions of the “feminist five” for planning to protest against sexual harassment on public transport. In 2018, a second wave of activism inspired by the #MeToo movement briefly flourished on campuses and elsewhere – but courts and censors proved unsympathetic and one of its key figures was jailed for five years this summer.
Yet the grievances still resonate and the ideas sown by those movements have since bloomed. A decade ago, many women concluded that they had no alternative but to marry – however unenthusiastic they were about it. Now, birthrates and marriage rates are falling in part because they are concluding that they would rather go their own way, despite intense family and – increasingly – political pressure. Her Story, and the way it has been embraced by female viewers, speaks volumes about the desire of Chinese women for a better deal. Now that it has been unleashed, that appetite won’t be curbed.
