Renwu, Big Sisters

Renwu, “Being a Big Sister has Become a Thing”[1]
 
Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction

The texts translated here are:  a letter from a reader of the popular publication Renwu/人物/People to that publication, and a response from a Renwu editor to the reader.  This is something Renwu appears to do with some frequency:  they announce a topic, solicit letters, and then respond to them, sort of a thematic Dear Prudence, for readers who know the American advice column (Renwu calls it “one letter” 一封信).  The topic this time was “the difficulties of being an elder sister,” and Renwu received 168 letters, of which they printed four, together with responses by members of the editorial staff.  I translated only one exchange.

To me, Renwu has a younger vibe; the editors sound like 30-somethings, as does the writer of the translated letter.  But they received letters from women old enough to be their mothers and grandmothers, suggesting that the topic has a certain timeless valence.  And to some extent, being the oldest sister can mean much the same thing everywhere:  growing up too quickly and sacrificing what might have been a carefree youth to chores and household responsibilities.  The Renwu exchange alludes to this, but also refers to something more specific to China:  the “hidden” children produced by the confluence of China’s one-child policy and the gender preferences of traditional Chinese society.

In this case, the letter-writer, who must have been born in the mid-1990s to a couple that wanted a boy, was squirreled away when her younger brother was born a year later, shuttling between the homes of various relatives, having to lie to school officials about who were parents were.  She was eventually “welcomed back” into the family, but no one apologized or acknowledged her suffering in any way, and instead she quickly became the big sister that cleaned the house and fixed the meals.  Everyone just treated this as normal, as did she, until graduate studies in journalism brought her into contact with feminist ideas, at which point she had an awakening.  Seeing her family and her life through new eyes, she essentially broke with her family, venting the rage built up over years on WeChat and refusing to return home for the holidays.

There is no “news” in the letter or in the editorial response, which also talks about hidden children.  In the letter-writer’s extended family, there are several similar cases of hidden children, and when confronted on the issue, her father simply says, “it happens all the time.”  What stands out to me is the emotional cruelty inflicted on these children and the complicity of the larger society in this cruelty.  If this did indeed happen "all the time,” then relatives knew, neighbors knew, schools knew, doctors knew, local authorities knew.  Yes, it was largely the fault of the one-child policy, or at least people could blame it on that, but still…That said, we must admit that cruelty exists in many forms in all societies, and we simply choose every day not to look at it.  Homelessness in America comes to mind.

The other thing that stands out is the immense gap between traditional Chinese society and its gender preferences and the mental world inhabited by the letter-writer and the editor.  They are feminists who see their world much as feminists anywhere else do.  I am more and more convinced that this is a sea change that has occurred in China – above all in urban China – over the course of reform and opening, another time-bomb ticking away as the Party-State seeks to reimpose ideological discipline.  Feminists can no longer organize in China, and the fixation of the state on control has the side effect of reinforcing traditional gender ideology.  But Chinese women are not fooled and a day of reckoning will come.
 
Translation
 
Among all the elder sisters, my status may be the lowest.   I am an elder sister who was made “outside the plan,” because I have a brother who is only one year younger than I am. What does it mean to be "outside the plan?" My parents were both state employees, and according to the family planning policy at the time, they could only have one child. Although I was the first, they hid me because I was a girl and passed my “quota” on to my little brother.   In other words, it was actually my brother who was outside the plan, but for a long time, I thought that I was the extra one, who should have never existed. 
 
Along with the legal and rightful birth quota, countless other rights were also given away. My childhood was very different from that of other people. I couldn't call my parents "Mom and Dad," but instead called them "Second Auntie and Second Uncle." Whenever a teacher asked me where my parents are and what they do, I could only say that they were "working in Shenzhen." From the very first school form I filled out, I could only write the name of my fourth aunt in the “parents” box, and I was once laughed at by my classmates for "having no parents." In addition, I did not live with my parents while growing up, and was shuttled back and forth between various relatives, “hiding out” all along.  When I was asked whose child I was, or when I heard female classmates of the same age talking about their mothers and fathers, I didn't know where I belonged, which made it difficult to establish an identity.
 
My brother, who is one year younger than I am, has lived with our parents all along, being cared for and pampered. It was not until he was in junior high school that he knew that I was his biological sister. Before that, he would ask me, "When are your parents going to pick you up? When they do, they should pay us child support, and my family will be rich," and he always insisted that the order of our family was father, mother, him and then me.  My parents took me back when I was in my fourth year of middle school, but we were not close, and I had strong feelings of being the outsider living with strangers.
 
In our family of four, what my ignorant brother said was true, in that I had no status at all.   As a daughter, and also an elder sister, I was the only one required to do the housework. There was never a moment without gender discipline, and there was no thought about compensating me in any way for what I had been through.   I was forced to grow up quickly and understand “how the world works,” which meant washing the dishes and mopping the floor. Those who knew about my situation rationalized it, especially my father. He is the only son in his family, with seven older sisters.  The idea that “sons pass on the family line” is firmly entrenched in his head, as if families had thrones, which sons could occupy but not daughters.  Whenever it was mentioned that I had been squirreled away and hidden as soon as I was born, he would say matter-of-factly: "That happens all the time." My mother is a of course woman, but she is thoroughly patriarchal and extremely misogynistic. That today I enjoy good physical and mental health despite growing up in such an environment is a miracle.
 
For a while, I selectively ignored the reality that they preferred boys to girls, and frantically looked for reasons to comfort myself, telling myself that "they’ve been nice enough to me." When I was in university, I even boldly started calling them “Mother and Father.”  For graduate studies, I tested into journalism, after which I came into contact with sociology and feminism and began to look at my family of origin with new eyes.  In my extended family, there are seven children of my age, including three girls, all of whom are older sisters. One of my younger cousins has been "hidden" since birth, like me, but she had a bit more luck, because her little brother came along four years later.  My mother has an older brother and two younger sisters, so she was also an elder sister and had to take care of most of the household chores from the time that she was a child.
 
Setting aside my case and that of my mother, the "eldest sister dilemma" is actually the gender dilemma of the women in our family. All of us are required to be patient, obedient, mature, and hard-working, so in every family you will find the women cooking in the kitchen and the men playing on their cell phones in the living room.
 
As for me, I really started fighting back against my family of origin when I was 26.  I didn’t go home for New Years, did not take the initiative to contact my parents, and when I could no longer bear it, expressed my true thoughts in my WeChat groups.  I tried to actively communicate with my little brother and sought to gain the sympathy of those in the family chat group by talking about what I had suffered. I have little hope of rebuilding an ideal family relationship; at present, I have single-handedly destroyed the superficially harmonious family relationship we maintained for years so as to express the pain and anger I have felt.  It doesn’t matter whether I can rebuild my family; what matters is that I stop punishing myself.

Editor's Response

Dear elder sister,
 
It's heartbreaking to read about your "lowliness." I am also an elder sister - my family wanted a boy, but I had a little sister. Of course she was "outside the plan," so the kind of hiding that you talked about happened to her as well. I always remember one winter, when my father’s friends from work came to our house for dinner, my sister hid upstairs. The two of us huddled around a charcoal stove, roasting our faces while our backs stayed cold. My sister said nothing for a long time but then asked, “Why am I a non-person?”
 
A non-person [lit. a “black person” 黑人] is what we call people without a household registration.  My sister only made her way into our household registration when she was ten years old, after many twists and turns.  That experience made her feel that something was not right about her existence: Why should a little girl always have to live in such fear?
 
And I deeply understand that the best thing in life is to have a little sister – and not a little brother. If I had a younger brother, I can imagine what kind of deprivation it would bring. My friends have told me too many stories like this, the kind of stories that you they have had to chew over in silence for a long time, swallowing hard, and only in the past couple of years finding the words they need to express themselves.  Listening to them I sometime rejoice, but fear and trembling remain as well.
 
You call yourself "elder sister." We’ve discussed things in terms of being a sister and in terms of gender.  It’s still worth thinking about the weight of being “elder.”
 
When I was a teenager, my parents did not get along. Every time there was a fight, my sister would go upstairs and close the door, and I would always be the one to mediate. This meant that my head was wound up pretty tight, and that I was always preparing to jump in and protect my mother if necessary.
 
For a long time, my relationship with my father was very confrontational. After I left home to study in Beijing, my sister was the only one at home, and my father came to show his caring side, and would sometimes even bring a meal to my sister at her high school. Later, my sister also came to Beijing to study. When we went home for Spring Festival, I found that my sister could play the cute little girl with our father, something I couldn’t do. Still, when my parents fought, my sister would call me so that I could “talk to my father.”  The subject of these “talks” ranged from big things like going to the hospital for a check-up to small things like what kind of air conditioner they should buy or whether they should redo the floors.  I fulfilled my mission for a long time, up until two or three years ago, when I finally couldn't take it anymore and told my mother that all of this is her business and that I was no longer going to take care of it.
 
I should have been able to tell her this calmly, but in fact I was furious, and saying it didn’t make me feel better.  I just felt empty.  I am no longer a reliable daughter, and looking around, you see how few ties there are in life.  Your parents don't really love you, they don't really care about you, they just have some demands that they want you to meet. Despite all the confusion, this answer is painfully obvious, and I saw how I had been straining and and growing rigid from the burdens placed on me over the years. 
 
There is a scene that I still remember more than ten years ago. It was summer and I was playing at a friend's house and saw that next door, the people were busy.   This family lives in the countryside and comes to the county town every weekend to sell their chickens. The parents were sweating profusely, struggling with the chicken coop, and the older brother was helping them, sweating like a pig as well.

​The younger brother, however, paid no attention and had no work to do, so he skipped along merrily, in his own little world, even if his skipping got in the older brother’s way.  After the chicken coop was set up, the younger brother demanded his parents’ attention, and the older brother had to finish things up, which he did, although he was visibly upset, spilling the water as he fetched the bucket.  That scene is deeply etched in my mind. How the older brother envied his younger brother's insouciance, while his hands were always full of something to do.
 
This may be the fate of those who are “elder,” for whom there are always expectations and demands to be reliable.  When we combine “elder” and “sister,” we get something deeper.  Rebuilding is difficult - at the end of your letter, you say that “It doesn’t matter whether I can rebuild my family; what matters is that I stop punishing myself.”  Perhaps this is the start of rebuilding.
 
Later, my sister and I both wound up in Beijing. She lived in a small bungalow in Dongsishitiao. Sometimes I went to see with her and watched the stray cats queuing up to eat on her small terrace. We were sisters and friends, and we shared the same good fortune—she also knew that had she had a brother instead of a sister, she would never have been born, and shared many of the secrets of growing up. We are gradually identifying those things that we suffer in our families because we are women.
 
Hugs to you and to my younger sister. 
 
Huai Yang, Editor

Notes

[1] “当长姐成为一种处境,” published in the online version of 人物/People on November 8, 2023.