CHINA'S MODERN WOMEN.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3464, 7 April 1930, Page 3

CHINA'S MODERN WOMEN.

A SEVERE CRITICISM

A curse to her parents in girlhood, ana a deadweight to her husband in marriage, is the deplorable offering - of modern Chinese women, according to ( hineso men writers, who are terrified at the extremism of Chinese women’s emancipation in ( hina. The very idea that the birth of New China has raised the status of Chinese girls to the same level as Chinese boys seems awesome to some conservative Chinese observers. Sc -ools have lifted the ban against girls, commercial houses have employed them “without discrimination,” and the law, it is lamented, has even gone so far as to “grant unmarried women equal rights of inheritance with boys.” The result, as examined by Paul K. Whang, in the ‘China Weekly Review’ (Shanghai), is that in addition to political revolution, much advertised in the foreign press, China has been undergoing a social revolution “of greater, consequence,” to which the world has i\ot so far given much attention. It is not western civilisation that is blamed so much by Mr Whang, as the fact that the modern Chinese girl is too much under its infliieliee and “blindly worships” everything imported from Europe and America. We are told; “She bobs her hair, puts on foreignstyle dresses and shoes, and carries foreign-made handbags. From head to foot, everything on her, and everything she carries, cither is of foreign make or a domestic imitation of foreign goods. To be sure, she is afraid of no men, and goes with them to have a good time in dancing halls and cinema houses. She stays out late at night, and enjoys as much freedom as her brothers. While in daily pursuit of pleasure and excitement, she looks upon the home life as dreary and tiresome, and domestic affairs as trivial and unworthy. Thus she neither goes into the kitchen nor makes her own clothes, as her older sisters did. She defies the orders of her parents, and laughs at the old teachings of female virtues. She may attend the school, but she does so not for the sake of education, but for bettering her chances- in selecting a husband. At school her curriculum is to learn new dancing stops and imported love songs. She is modernised so far as her- personal appearance is concerned, and besides that there is nothing in her which commands our respect. While a girl, she is a curse to her parents ; and, when married, she is a burden to her husband.”