Honks of cars and scooters insufferably compete with poodles yapping and bikes squeaking, old men sit on a corner playing cards while their ladies hustle about selling goods.
This picture has set the scene outside the gates of the Suiyuan Nanjing Normal University campus for more than a hundred years now, and changes such as the Mac Donalds, the petrol station, bars, restaurants and loitering Ubers help to illustrate the turn of the millennia. Stroll through those front gates, however, and take a step back in time, to when China was just beginning to make its mark on the world stage, to a time when women just like me, were given for the first time ever, a chance at a future, a chance to compete against the worlds elite in some of the most prestigious and internationally sought after positions of that age.
Flanking either side of the footpath are huge London plane trees (wutong) that instil feelings of tranquillity and focus. Wandering through, I am left to ponder about all those women that came before me, all those women that are out there now fighting tooth and nail just to compete, and all those women that will come after me. What does it mean to be given the chance to compete? And what will come of the women of today’s Ginling?
What is now Nanjing Normal University was once the Ginling Women’s College, China’s first baccalaureate for female studies (1915). It boasts a rich and proud history of providing Chinese women with an all round education. “The Ginling has a long lineage of elite graduates ranging from different areas such as statesmen, scientists, writers, artists, physicians and professors that have gone on to live abroad and do great things”, Ginling Women’s College professor Ms. Yang Suping told The Nanjinger.
These walls and corridors could tell a thousand stories and more, and while most are of great achievements and love, some bear a more sinister tone. The Ginling experienced a period of immense darkness that spawned a legacy of survival and strength. When the Japanese invaded Nanjing in 1937, the Ginling became an established safety zone (thanks to Ms. Minnie Vautrin) and ended up saving the lives of over ten thousand women and children. As time passed, the light at the end of a long and tragic tunnel began to appear again as China regained her strength and sense of competition and pride.
Popularity amongst Chinese women to earn an education of their own grew and grew, during the Mao years Ginling enrollees reached the thousands. Mrs. Li Lijun who graduated in 1957 describes the day she was accepted, “I woke up when the sun [had] just come out and bought a copy of the Jiefang Daily. My heart was pumping so fast as I was trying to find my name between the lines”. Li said her four years spent at the Gingling were some of the happiest of her life. “As I watched the manner our professors had and how they were loved by their students, I knew this was what I wanted to do. This was who I wanted to be.” Li said her education has not only provided her [with] knowledge, but has also given her a lifetime of purpose and inner strength, even during the hardest times that came ten years later in the Cultural Revolution.
When I asked Mrs. Li, who now lives with her husband and daughter’s family in Atlanta, USA, what she would like to tell the young women of today, she said, “Find your purpose in life, never depend on a man, read a lot and experience; the most valuable thing in a woman is her unique soul, not good looks”.
Fast forward to present China and we find ourselves ever so fascinated at the pace of growth and development. From an economical perspective China’s rise is both praised and feared, but from a social standpoint perhaps such rapid growth has not allowed enough time for a natural social progression. The West experienced the rise of Frida feminism along with flower power and over a long period of time societies so too adjusted.
Major social change in China has forced women to jump straight from their concubine restraints of the Qing dynasty right into an elitist university studying everything from mathematics and science to home economics, sport and baking. China previous saw its women accelerate from a liberal arts type of education to communist style suppression. Finally, having opened her doors to the West Chinese women have completely bypassed the feminist movement and have sped on up to the year 2016, joining ranks with women all over the world and adopting (for better or worse) a very sexualised and capitalist idea of freedom and independence.
“I think Chinese girls in their 20s feel a bit lost and unsure about their future,” said Dou Han, a recent Nanjing Normal University graduate. With parents clasping onto concepts of hard work for family and state, the Chinese youth of today are worked into the ground in order to compete in the ever-swelling job market. “I think values of spirit, independence and freedom need to be brought back”, she added. Pressure to compete on every level is what the young people of China feel today, a mountain of stress, everything from from marriage, money, success, social status and face, is laid down upon their shoulders, and for many it means wrestle or flounder. “In China, a popular view is that single women over 26 are considered ‘left-over’. I’m not so worried right now but I’m a little scared about turning 25 and not finding the other half”, said Dou.
With thousands of years of history, an inherent sense of self-pride and success is evident in the Chinese people. Combine that with unrelenting patriotism and one is left with a fierce people who are willing to compete on all levels around the clock, ready to settle for nothing but success. Noticeable in every facet of Chinese life, from the auntie on the street selling her egg pancakes one metre away from another auntie, from the behemoth startups such as Alibaba competing against other giants that include Amazon to a new breed of competition in the workforce; the Chinese businesswoman.
Successful businesswomen can be found in every city across China, buzzing from client to client in their BMWs and making business calls on their iPhones. Running innovative and entrepreneurial startups such as customer relationship management and app building, to Mary Kay and English schools, to pole dancing classes and wardrobe sorting services, these women are thinking of it all and there is no stopping them.
One such start up is designed exactly for these women and directed by Ms. Sara Jane Ho (dubbed Miss Manners). Ms. Ho and her team are running China’s leading etiquette school, Institute Sarita, built to accommodate the finishing needs of China’s top echelon. “Institute Sarita was founded to teach social and business etiquette to Chinese people with the need to interact with foreigners,” said Ms. Lu Liqin, COO & CFO of Institute Sarita, speaking with The Nanjinger. “Everyone should have a basic understanding of social etiquette; that was the case in China for a long time. In my opinion, this should be a mandatory course in all schools in the future. How to incorporate such a course into schools and how to price it would need further discussion with the education bureaus, but it should be a basic offering,” said Lu.
“I think many newly rich in China just learn these etiquettes to show off their class,” continued university graduate Dou. While this may be true, the government recently issued a finger-wagging checklist to which the Chinese tourist must adhere due to “obnoxious” and “primitive” behaviour abroad. “We felt there was a need in the Chinese market because we saw increasingly, Chinese people are going abroad to travel and study, and there was an apparent gap in the expected and actual behaviour of these people, which caused certain concerns even domestically,” commented Lu.
It is interesting that when Mao came along he abolished the drive to be competitive, the need to succeed; when Deng followed, he opened the doors and encouraged his people to mass produce and mass copy in a desperation to catch up, and now Xi pipes up and calls on his people to innovate! Innovation, independence, success, education, and competition… these are exactly the kinds of values that were being celebrated and encouraged at the Ginling Women’s College over 100 years ago.
Ms. Lu also commented that, “our clients come to our Institute for various reasons, but not because learning etiquette is ‘trendy’. Women who have the means to come to us do so because they want to become citizens of the world. Our course empowers women to be the best versions of themselves and that means giving them confidence to handle anyone, anywhere and [and] with savoir-faire”.
百折不挠 Persistence pays off in the end
The Chinese are no strangers to hard work and the desire to compete, save face and conquer is etched into the hearts and souls of most people I meet. Sometimes I wonder, “don’t they ever just chill? When do they relax? Don’t they understand the pleasures life also has to offer?” However, the longer I live here and more I understand about Chinese culture, the more things start to make sense. While Western culture can certainly teach a thing or two about leisure and enjoying life, Chinese culture on the other hand, is geared up to teach us a thing or two about the road to success.
This article was first published in The Nanjinger Magazine, August 2016 issue. If you would like to read the whole magazine, please follow this link.
