ABSTRACT
One evening after dinner in the summer of 2006, I was talking to a couple of live-in domestic workers in the Purple Garden, while watching children play. One of them-a maid from Gansu Province, whom we were calling “Bing Jiejie” (“Soldier Sister”) because she was registered with a domestic agency that exclusively employs former female soldiers, started telling us about an item she had watched on CCTV’s current affairs program, Jingri Shuofa (Today’s Topic). The story was about a 15-year-old girl from rural Henan who worked as a domestic in a city in Fujian Province. Her employer, a single professional woman, apparently had subjected the girl to extreme physical and psychological violence, causing fractured bones, lost teeth, and serious disfigurement. Still the maid did not dare tell anyone about her employer’s sadistic behavior. It was not until she was taken to hospital and treated for an “accidental fall” that doctors became suspicious. The following is an excerpt from my record of our conversation about the show:
SOLDIER SISTER (SS): My mother saw a program on TV and rang me today from back home to ask if I was OK. She’s worried that my employers may treat me in the same way. I happened to see the show myself, too.
