"Yes, I felt free and at ease," I say. "I guess that's why I don't have friends from the Senate or an office that overlooks the bay. Everything has a price."
96 The Communist Englishman and the Capitalist Chinese
My colleague Sean, after learning Chinese for four years in London, has come to China as a foreign correspondent. Coming from a working-class neighborhood in Liverpool, Sean calls himself a socialist. He claims that the reason he wants to be a reporter is to speak for the poor. He comes to China because he believes there are more voices from the poor here than in England.
But he is disappointed at the Chinese journalists. He complains to me, "They are capitalists now, always writing about millionaires and celebrities. It's so boring. If China 's journalists don't speak for the people, then I will have to speak for them. Look, whenever they talk about disabled people, they always say disabled people should support themselves. Where is the so cial security system? If parents give birth to a disabled child, does it serve them right? Doesn't society have any responsibility at all? And what about the peasants – the revolution is over fifty years old, but they still don't have medical insurance or pensions, and the local governments still force them to pay all sorts of exorbitant taxes like population taxes, family planning taxes, road construction taxes, textbook taxes, as well as pig taxes. The peasants in the countryside can't earn any money, so they flood into the cities! But look at how the cities treat them – even worse than Americans treat Mexican immigrants!" He is showing me an article of a Henan immigrant worker who was gang-raped in Shenzhen.
The poor woman didn't bring the proper identification card with her so the police put her in the correction center. But for some reason, she was placed in the men's cell and was raped repeatedly by the inmates and guards. After she got out, her parents didn't support her for telling the story to the media because they thought it was scandalous and also they were afraid of retaliation. At first, she listened to them. But her husband insisted that they needed to fight back. With him on her side, she told the local newspaper about the horrifying experience she suffered at the correction center. Soon, it caught the attention of the national media.
"I've been writing an article on this case, but nobody wants to talk to me. I'm sick to death of it. Whenever I go anywhere to report on something, as soon as people hear I am a foreign journalist, they are afraid. The husband of the victim originally agreed to an interview, but then he changed his mind. His lawyer also changed his story. They don't trust me. Why?"
"You are…"
"I'm a foreigner? So I can't be trusted? But doesn't everyone welcome international friends now? Especially foreign businessmen. Is it only their money that's welcome? Is that right? Chinese people are great to me. But why won't they let me interview them?"
"There is a saying: Don't air your dirty linen in public."
"It seems to me that these Chinese people still remember when they were bullied by the English. Niuniu, let's work on a piece about China 's underclass together! At least, the Chinese will speak their minds to you."
Sean's words remind me of Mimi, my lawyer friend who always represents the Chinese underclass. Since I interviewed her for my article on returning Chinese, we have become close friends. Unlike Lulu and Beibei, Mimi doesn't talk about men; instead, she loves talking about books, art, and social issues with me. She takes me to a deaf school, to a migrant workers' dwelling in the south of the city, and to a center for abused women, and helps me gather materials.
In the course of my startling research, I learn about the miserable world that some women still live in today. It is a world of dog-eat-dog poverty, despair, sixteen-hour workdays, struggle, tears, never seeing the light of day, unfairness, prostitution, rape, discrimination, abduction, and slavery. Making these hardships even more unbearable for me to observe, let alone write about, is that in the midst of all the suffering there are women with firm, indomitable, and loving hearts.
The most unforgettable conversation was with a pedicurist from Yangzhou called Huanzi. Huanzi spends twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, in a bathhouse – she works, eats, and sleeps there. She earns 1,500 yuan per month and has no medical insurance. She says to me that if she becomes ill, then she would rather die than be a burden to her family. Medical bills are too expensive.
I am unable to keep my usual detachment from my interviewees. Beyond seeing their suffering and writing about their suffering, I have to do something more for these people.
I speak to Mimi urgently. "Maybe besides our Jeremy Irons club and Ricky Martin fan club, we should also set up a Little Women's Club. The mission of this club would be to raise money for the poor, uneducated, and mentally and physically traumatized girls through hosting cultural events."
"Sounds great! We should make the club exclusive and the membership fee expensive," Mimi says.
"Why?" I ask.
"Charity, like golf, is a fashion among the rich. They will only do it when they think it is fashionable," Mimi adds with a bored expression and a wave of her hand.
97 The Little Women's Club
Following my experiences on my trip to the countryside, I return to the city and set up the Little Women's Club with CC and Mimi. We are all little women – shorter than five foot four. China is fascinated with models and the Brooke Shields type of tall Western beauty, and many Chinese women are risking their lives with leg operations to gain height, so we decide to celebrate being petite. "I was told Lucy Liu is only five foot three," says CC.
"Zhang Ziyi is only five-foot-three," Mimi says.
"Not to mention Mother Teresa, Liz Taylor, and Aung San Suu Kyi!" I add.
We set the requirements for membership in the Little Women's Club: a woman no more than five foot four in height, with a postgraduate degree or better and a strong CV.
Our shortest member is Dove, a poet, author, singer, and film star. She has published a collection of essays called Size Doesn ' t Matter. We set up a reading at CD Cafe, where Dove reads, sings, and screams. That night, we sell seven hundred copies of her book.
Although the membership fees are $1,000 per year, the response to the Little Women's Club advertisements exceeds all expectations. Female entrepreneurs, artists, authors, actresses, engineers, lawyers – all extremely intelligent women – donate money and offer suggestions. Some even voluntarily design the Little Women's Club Web site. Being a member of the Little Women's Club becomes fashionable and something of a status symbol.
Beibei, who has been doing business for so many years, knows clearly that in China, connections means money. She arranges for a concert to be hosted jointly by the Little Women's Club and her Chichi Entertainment Company and invites her proteges, the Young Revolutionaries, to be the only male special guests.
My father's company donates 500,000 yuan and Mimi's husband, Lee, provides 200,000 yuan on behalf of his company. In return, we give their companies exposure everywhere and one hundred VIP tickets.
Advertisements for the Little Women's Club Concert quickly appear at Beijing bus stops, and on radio stations, television stations, and even buses.
Beibei is pleased. Foreign company sponsorship, popular big-shot stars taking part, a public benefit concert, and television coverage – with the Young Revolutionaries as the only male act – it's a perfect chance for her to promote her band and gain publicity. She jokes, "Although I'm excluded from membership because of my height, I'll make the little women work for me! This is a battle between the tall and the short!"
On the day of the concert, Mimi and her husband Lee, Weiwei and his latest girlfriend, CC, Lulu, stepmother Jean, and I all sit in Lee's company minibus. It is like a family picnic.