ABSTRACT
“I believe that the most important quality for being woman is ren [忍, submission]!” This is a statement offered by an elderly woman approaching the age of 80 at a public gathering in March 2011. She was one of the interviewees for my oral history project, a Christian who had just celebrated her sixtieth anniversary of baptism, whose life could be described as very turbulent and depressing. She was abandoned by her mother and dumped at the door of her grandmother’s home in a poor village soon after she was born. She was often beaten to “half-death” by her uncle in the village and then her father after she was “returned” to him because of a village-wide famine. One of her most deeply imprinted memories was of being sent, when she was eight, from her grandma’s village to Macau, where her father worked, on the backseat of a bicycle. At several points along the long rugged road, she was thrown onto the paddy fields and was covered with mud by the time of her arrival. Her life after marriage was not any easier. Due to her husband’s strong sexual appetite she was pregnant back to back, giving birth to six children before she got a tubal ligation without her husband’s knowledge. Despite her Christian conviction in the importance of forgiveness and putting faith first, she could not help but call the men in her life “all very selfish.” 2 Given the difficulties she faced in life as a woman, her appeal above is particularly ambiguous. Why would a woman who has suffered through the worst fate and destiny possible for a Chinese daughter and wife still urge the younger generation of women to be “submissive” and simply accept what happens to them in life? What role has religion played in her attitude toward life as a woman? The testimony of such an elderly woman could easily provide a classic example of how religion and family collaborate in the oppression of women in Chinese society.
