'Iron Girl' of Mao Era Regaining Feminine Self

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, March 08, 2003

'Iron Girl' of Mao Era Regaining Feminine Self

She was once the most popular and prestigious "Iron Girl" in China, but definitely not the type of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

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She was once the most popular and prestigious "Iron Girl" in China, but definitely not the type of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

By toiling and sweating day after day in the terraced cornfields and doing the arduous farm work even men would find too harsh to bear, she became the head of Dazhai, a "pace-setter village" in China, which the late Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong called on the farmers across the nation to learn from the 1960s to mid 1970s, when she was only 16 years old, but at the cost of her femininities.

"Earning a mere seven cents a day, we had no money for beautiful clothes or cosmetics," recalled Guo Fenglian, now 56 and a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature. "Even if you got a new flower-dotted shirt, it would be worn out after a day of field work."

Wearing a red cashmere sweater and a light makeup and with a delicate mobile phone in her hand, the former Iron Girl, who came from north China's Shanxi province to Beijing for the ongoing annual full session of the NPC, is a sharp contrast to what she looked two or three decades ago.

Also changed is her title: now director of the board of the Dazhai Economic Development Corp., a consortium of 10 firms with an overall annual turnover of 100 million yuan (12 million dollars).

For thousands of years, women in China were treated as inferior to men and had to count on men for a living. After the founding of new China in 1949, Chairman Mao gave his famous assertion that "women hold up half of the skies", but things could not change overnight, especially in the vast countryside.

Guo and her "team of sisters", a general reference to the girls of her age in the village, were among the first Chinese rural women whose feminist awareness was awakened by the late chairman's call.

There were more than 20 elderly women in the village who were born in the early years of the 20th century, when the last feudal dynasty of China, the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), still reigned, recollected Guo. They all had the deformed "lotus feet" as a result of the barbaric ancient tradition of binding women's feet to meet the somewhat abnormal aesthetic taste of the men, and most of them didn't know what their husbands looked like until the wedding night.

"Seeing them leading a miserable life and even having difficulty in walking, we repeatedly told ourselves that we must not live like them," said Guo.

But in China of the 1960s, the only way that could help Guo and her sisters out was manual labor, and they still had to do it even better and harder than the men.

"We were tired out every day, but we felt ease at heart as we were no longer inferior or subordinate to men," said Guo with a pride. "After a full day of field labor, we could still sing songs and play dramas in the evening."

The greatest pity they had was that there was no way for them to display their feminine side. "I, too, love beauty, but I could not attain it as I was in no position to pursue it then," said Guo.

As a highly-famed public figure, Guo drew much media coverage with lots of photo opportunities, but she could find no pleasure in it. "Sometimes they (the photographers) would ask for a makeup, but that only meant adding some red color to my sun-tanned cheeks, which I'd rather have not."

In that time, however, women were preferred with tough looks, as Chairman Mao once hailed in his poem: "The women of China cherish lofty ideals, and they prefer soldiers' armors to feminine costumes."

As if to make up for what she had lost in the prime time of her life, Guo is paying much attention to her dresses and hair style nowadays. She would also like both of her daughters-in-law to often visit beauty salons to have their hairs curled up and keep up in fashion.

"While dressing yourself up, you're also contributing in beautifying the society," she said. "Even those teenage boys and girls who dyed their hairs in a range of colors look nice if you get used to it."

Guo also could not help envying today's young women, who seem to have "absolute freedom" in marriage. Even as an "Iron Girl", she was unable to make a completely independent choice of her own for marriage.

"As the whole village hoped I would stay even after marriage, it was the Party organizations that helped arrange my marriage and introduced my current husband to me," said Guo. "More than 20 of my sisters had similar experiences."

However, Guo said, she was puzzled to see some people today treat marriage and family life too lightly. "Of course marriage and divorce are sheer personal matters, but I still feel sorry to see so many children get hurt from the separation of their parents."

She found it harder still to understand the logic of some modern girls, including many young college graduates, who believe that "finding a wealthy, bigwig husband is more important than having a good career of your own".

Shaking her head in disapproval, Guo said she believes that self-respect, self-reliance and self-independence are critical to women of any times. "Just as an old saying in my hometown puts it, no one except yourself could guarantee your happiness," she said in a serious mood.

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