In China, Women’s Day is a real and widely celebrated holiday. Most women are given the afternoon or even the whole day off for work, and many stores offer sales and deals to women only!
I was very lucky to spend International Women’s Day with Sunny and her mother, Jessica. Since Jessica had the afternoon off, the three of us went to the other side of West Lake to a tea museum and to have dinner. Although the tea museum was closing, we did get to sneak into the “International History of Tea” hall, which described the history of tea spreading out from China and into the cultures of other countries. My favorite displays included England’s, which was a full diorama of aristocrats drinking tea with a mural of “Downton Abbey” in the background, and America’s, which featured a “Boston Tea Party” section with the deck of a ship, tea crates, and a mural of the harbor. It was like being home again!
Over dinner, I got to talk to Sunny and her Mom about women’s equality in China and the US. They both felt as though women were not only equal in China, but in many ways superior in today’s culture. They explained to me that it’s now customary for the husband in a relationship to surrender all of his money to the wife’s control, and generally speaking, in their experience, women have greater respect. I was surprised by this, because I spent an evening watching CCTV footage of Xi Xinping meeting with party leaders, and out of about forty people there were only a handful of women. Sunny and her mother were also very inquisitive about “stay-at-home mothers” in the US. I think they felt as though women didn’t have a choice in the matter. They were really interested to hear about my feelings about the state of gender equality in the US, and it was fascinating to hear about how far behind they feel that America is in it’s advancement of women.
I absolutely can’t believe we only have two weeks left in China. I don’t want to leave! I’m going to miss it so much.
Peace & Love, Hannah
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