Holding up Half the Sky

Sunday was International Women's Day... a day I had never heard of until moving to China. Women in China are granted a half day off of work for Women's Day, and restaurants hand out roses to female guests.

Chairman Mao once declared, "Women hold up half the sky," which sounds like a lovely statement of equality until you realize what it also meant was that men and women should both don identical quilted Mao jackets made out of cheap blue cotton and toil together in the fields or where ever else the dear leader needed them. This fact is never lost on me when I watch sweet old Auntie's --who wore out their knees or hips doing hard labor and raising a family in the genderless age of communism-- struggle to climb into city buses.

At Bea's kindie on Friday they had a special performance for International Women's Day. They sang some songs and had a sweet little question and answer session about how their Mom's help them. (I was pleased because both Bea and I seemed to be able to keep up with the Chinese dialog!) I sat on a tiny plastic chair with Bea's classmates grandparents (their dads and moms of course were out holding up the sky.)

The grandparents and I smiled and nodded at each other politely. They would gesture towards Bea as if to ask is that your kid? And I would smile and then look at the remaining 18 Chinese kiddos on the blue and red plastic chairs and guess which one belonged to them. They seemed as pleased with the performance as I was, and took pictures with 35 mm film cameras, though Bao Bao, Bea's hao peng you (good friend's) Grandpa who sat beside me ran a handicam video for the entire length of the program.

Bea has chosen the Chinese name Bei Bei for herself. I think its nice she choose her own Chinese name. Millie and Eliza's Chinese language teachers named them, which creates a rather surreal environment at Parent Teacher Conferences when they sit discussing our children by names we don't call them at home.

Bea informed me today that there is a new student in her class also named Bei Bei.

But then our Bei Bei added, "But she has black hair."