Lost Girls
Whom would you save first, if your father and mother has fallen into the water all together?
It looks easy. Most of people would save their mother first, as the saying goes, ladies first. At least, my gentle and enlightened friends must do it. But it is not yet the problem about which I am talking next.
First, let's look at the relations between age and gender at tabulation on the 2010 population census of the people's republic of China. As the tabulation show, the sex ratio is always above 1 before age 70, but the ratio drops below 1 after that and has been reduced to 0.5 at 90 years old. It suggests that there are almost 200 women among every 300 90-years-old people. So we can say, women live longer than men. This is a description on population. It dose not suggest that every woman must live a longer life than every man. Statistically, the words “women” and “men” refer to two groups of millions people respectively. These words are to be reread by someone gets confused in the next. There are many similar description in this article.
Now let's go back to the earlier question. How would your life be if your parents had not met and got married with each other? Could you imagine this world? It is complicated, we cannot answer it with yes or no. But you need to remember the first idea when you think.
This question came out to my mind a few years ago. I stayed home for a holiday during Chinese New Year. After dinner, my father talked with me about marriage at the living room, and just we two. He told me his love stories in the past, how many girls he met and how he met my mother finally. Maybe I missed the point, I had been very nervous at the story time. A voice in my head said “How lucky it was, if father had not met mother, I could never exist in the world.” But funny ideas overwhelmed my head soon. I imagined a new world, where my father had got married with another mother. Moreover I would be faster, higher and stronger.
Not until I read a article on female rights did I feel uncomfortable. Where was my mother in that world? It was unfair. Why did I not imagine that my mother had married to another father, who is rich and powerful, and l would live like a prince. So I realized that it was not mother first but father first in my subconscious. It is unfair. Guilty overwhelmed me again. I should say sorry to mum for my unfair imagination and have to figure out how it came to my mind.
Therefore, I started reviewing my childhood, my beginning. I born and lived in a house, it was the house of my father and grandfather. My father picked 3 Chinese words for my name. First one was family name and came from father, the second was chose from the genealogy and the third means wealthy. Although the second word of all my uncles' name are the same, they didn't name their children according on the genealogy at all. So my father also broke the rule and changed my second after a year. Finally it became my full name. I had no memory of my previous name, since I was too young at that time.
And then, I grew up and went to the primary school. I remember that my parents and my older sister stayed with me when I was doing my homework in the evening, under yellow light from the roof, with short clap of killing bugs. Happy hour was short. Unfortunately, They left home when I went to the middle school, there were only my grandparents and me left in the house. They would not come back home until Spring Festival. I remember that my mum bought me a brown coat in a winter. It was thick and heavy. Consequently, the memory of my house became the source of my thought. That is why the imaginary guy would almost lived in the same house.
If childhood memories are the root of our mind and inerasable, it would be unfair that most of the memories come from father family. Although mother and father make a baby equally at the beginning, the child will only become father family's property after grow up. Why? How does it happen?
At the early age of human history, matriarchy had been dominant. Because women had breeding superiority, and a man didn't know which child was his descendant, or even whether a baby had blood relation with a male. But with evolution, men became stronger, they were good at hunting and fighting. Consequently men's superior in collecting goods and protecting descendants brought about a revolution. The human society changed, patriarchy became dominant. Moreover, the men reinforce their powers in culture and consciousness over the years. And one of these is family name.
A name is the most important symbol for a person. If someone asks who you are, the best answer must be your name. Most people's family name come from their fathers. As a result, your name, stayed with you all the time, is always to tell others you are the descendant of your father and father family. A stranger may know nothing about you, but he or she would know from which family you come as soon as he gets your name. In the countryside, a family name may even indicate whether a person is a enemy or not. Naming right is one of the most important human rights. But in some countries, a woman still changes to her husband's name after marriage. Whether do women lived in those developed area, Europe, American, Japan care about their naming right?
Patriarchy reinforces its wall with goods and culture. And these two forge a person's body and spirit respectively. Someone may argue that it is the most efficient and just way to nurture families in society. The father family is responsible for nurturing children. They not only collect grains and meats for descendants, but also teach them knowledge and skill. The system secures the inheritance of family history and has made a lot of family trees all over the world.
If this is the meaning of human, many families would live hard in modern society. With urbanization, more and more families are divided into small one. How can a family pass down its history, if it only has daughters? It is not accepted by most of people that children's name can come after mother family. Even a mother family supplies half of economical and educational resource, it cannot get a chance. Therefore, are all single-daughter families doomed to die?
In patriarchy, children are properties of father, they inherit more thing from their father family. We cannot separate a child into two equal parts, one for father, one for mother. This conscious has been implanted into human gene over thousands of years. As a consequence, the sex ratio on or below 4 years old has became 120 to 100 in China, according to the previous tabulation. Shockingly, how do those girls lost in the world?
What can I do? I know it is unfair for mother. I am willing to inherit mother's name, but her family name also came from grandfather. So I would only inherit another father family name. As you can see, family name is a one-way street. There is not a family name which is passed down by female. Family name seem to be a culture blockade, the right is only open to male. And it has been lasting for thousands of years, from the beginning of civilization.
The society weaves a net of culture, people act under its moral rules. Those rules like the meta-commands to run a machine. Only with efforts and luck, one is able to dig out a little subconscious beneath the surface and make clear relations between people. And all I do is to answer the questions, what is I? where am I from?
- Tabulation on the 2010 population census of the people's republic of China. http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/pcsj/rkpc/6rp/indexch.htm.