The special report page of the July 3 issue of Southern Weekly, a newspaper famous for its liberal politics, is about an emerging chastity movement in China.
The thinking behind the Chinese chastity movement is certainly different from similar movements in the US and other Western countries.
Along with the report are three independent stories with a shared theme: the confusion about keeping chaste. Below is a translation of one of the three stories.
Modern stories of chastity
by Shen Liang
Shen Fan, a 25-year-old girl, studies philosophy at Nanjing university. Like most girls in the country, Shen Fan’s chastity education was mainly from her parents’ nagging and preaching, a calculation of benefit and loss about keeping or losing chastity.
Every summer and winter when she goes back to her family in Handan, Hebei Province , she watches TV with her parents, a habit she has kept for more than ten years. As always, every time there is anything about premarital sex on TV, Shen Fan’s mother can’t conceal her contempt: “This woman doesn’t have brains.”
Aside from watching TV, “chastity education” is also permeated through small talks, for example, gossiping about friends and relatives. A cousin of Shen Fan, four years her elder, was criticized for being too intimate to her boyfriend by the older generation of the family. “How stupid! Doesn’t she mind the man taking advantage of her,” said Shen’s mother.
“There are two kinds of women in mother’s eyes when it comes to sex: smart ones and stupid ones,” said Shen Fan.
Shen Fan’s “chastity education” lasted over ten years. When Shen Fan was in middle school, she hardly played with boys, let alone went to any parties. She didn’t feel she needed to. Even now, she never goes home later than 9 o’clock when she is with her family on holidays.
Sometimes her mother tells Shen Fan her own story: When she was sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, she and her girl friends were determined not to marry the peasants. Their determination paid off: after they went back to the cities, all of the “sisters” got married with government cadres, doctors and businessmen—all of them urbanites. Every time Shen’s mother meets these friends, she becomes even more proud of herself for making a sound choice.
“My parents believe that the most important thing for a woman is to marry into a good family, and losing virginity before marriage is losing competitiveness, which may lead to losing an opportunity of a good marriage,” said Shen Fan.
Moreover, a woman can be respected or disrespected simply for chastity. “When my parents got married, my mother was a virgin, which gave her a sense of moral superiority, especially when quarreling with father.”
One time when Shen Fan went to Beijing to meet with her boyfriend, she received a phone call from mother the moment she stepped into the hotel. After she knew that her daughter was with a man in a hotel room, the mother lost her temper. Shen Fan said she was shouting so loudly on the phone that her boyfriend even heard it from another room. “Be careful, you know what is important.” said the mother after Shen promised her boyfriend wouldn’t stay.
“They would be very happy to hear that my boyfriend loves me more than the other way around. The most ideal scenario to them is that he has fallen deeply in love, while I still keep my cool,” said Shen Fan, “they want tangible benefit.”
Now Shen Fan has a new boyfriend, but she has not told her parents, because he cannot meet her parents’ standards for a prospective son-in-law. Another thing she does not want to let her parents know is that they had sex. Shen Fan said she tries to avoid wearing warm-colored clothes because that makes her feel less guilty.
- Southern Weekly: Modern stories of chastity keeping