Blog 1

I did not spend much time with my parents since I was born, because they had to go to work in another city. I was resigned to my grandparents who had been influenced by Confucianism for their whole life. In the 1990s, the idea of Confucius still had strong effect on Chinese people who lived in the Mainland. Besides the way I had learned from my grandmother how to be a woman in a family, I learned the way as a young girl in a family from dramas.

My grandmother always complied with my grandfather and she did all housework, which were the same as what I had known from the drama. I asked my grandfather, “Why don’t you do housework?” He did not answer me, but my grandmother answered, “He is a man. Why should he do housework? Housework is for women.” I could not understand why men should not do housework; however, I did not get the answer I wanted from them. It seemed easier for me to understand it was the social structure and these were my responsibilities from the drama, since I could find some characters who were young girls. The most influential drama to me was Hua Mu Lan, which was a story about a girl gone to war instead of her father during the Xu Dynasty. She was doing housework at home as all other girls, but her life changed since her father was drafted to go to war. She was the only child in her house and her father was old. She pretended herself as a man, and she had great contribution in the war. She was considered a heroine in the Chinese history. The story was real, and this was a model for women in modern life. My grandfather told me this story and asked me to learn from her.; even though she was a woman, she was able to as great as a man.

The story of Hua Mu Lan was taught at school and created as cartoon, drama and movie in the beginning of the twenty-first century. The story was so popular because Hua Mu Lan was the first woman who went to war and proved the ability of women. As I became more knowledgeable at middle school and learned computer skills, I did not want to spend rest of my life with housework. I did not want to waste the knowledge that I had learn and the time I had spent on study. The story of Hua Mu Lan made me realized that I was living in the modern period; I should not rely on the old social structure that was created in the past to limit the abilities of women. In order to get rid of the depression from the birth of two daughters in my family, I am seeking a way to be a woman as Hua Mu Lan.

video from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kLvOEtZRf0