Women of Nanjing

Abstract

Women of Nanjing May-lee Chai (bio) On a recent trip to Nanjing, I watch as a middle-aged woman, perhaps a little younger than I, walks down the sidewalk of Zhong Yang Boulevard with her dog, a fluffy white Bichon-like creature. The woman is swathed in layers of yellow chiffon like a bridesmaid. Judging by her age, I know she must have experienced at least part of the Cultural Revolution when everyone was forced to wear green or blue unisex pants and jackets. She must have lived through the early reform period, too, when student demonstrations echoed through the streets. If she is a local, then she must remember all the decades when there was no heat in the winter in Nanjing, despite the snow, nor air conditioning in summer, despite the heat. When the light changes, she bends over and picks up her dog and carries it across the street in her plump arms like a baby, then sets it down carefully on the other side. The dog dances a little on its hind legs after she puts it down, does a little flip, then eagerly follows her down the sidewalk. Sometimes a revolution looks like this: a yellow-clad middle-aged woman walking down the sidewalk with her pampered Bichon. ________ I remember when dogs were banned as pets, when the Communist Party referred to them as remnants of petty bourgeois elitism. When I was a foreign student at Nanjing University in the late 1980s, the Chinese students used to tell me stories of the pets they once had. There was a tiny break in the policy in the awkward transition years between Mao's death in 1976, signaling the end of the Cultural Revolution, and the start of the Open Door reform period under Deng Xiaoping, in December of 1978. No one knew how far the reforms would go or how fast. When one student was in elementary school, he remembered that suddenly it was legal to have pets in the city, and, like that, farmers from the countryside started bringing in puppies and kittens for sale. His family bought him a dog, just a tiny one, but the policy changed and pets were outlawed again. Maybe they were considered spiritual pollution. Maybe it was because rabies vaccines were rare and expensive and someone in the government felt they could be a health hazard in the densely populated cities. He'd already grown to love his dog, so his family conspired to hide it from the authorities. There were many people he remembered who did this, keeping their pets indoors, and bringing cats and dogs out into the alleys to play in the sun only when they were absolutely sure there were no police in sight. [End Page 27] He remembered it was on one such day that he was playing with his dog, just a small dog really, and he'd forgotten to pay attention or else the police had come very quickly, or maybe the police knew full well what people were doing with their secret, illegal pets and were lying in wait. He heard the whistle and then the police were there. His grandmother came out immediately—his parents must have been at work—and she held him while he cried. The policemen took his dog, along with the other pets that they rounded up from his neighbors' homes in the alley, and then they beat the animals to death with clubs, right there in the street. "I'll never forget," he said. ________ "I never thought I'd drive a car," the English professor tells me in the swank new restaurant she and her husband have invited me to try. She says she and her husband resisted buying a car, waiting much longer than any of their family, but then one Spring Festival they were stranded in a neighboring province, waiting for a train. There was a freak accident of some sort, and they had no way to get home. People with cars could take the brand new superhighways, but they had to wait, trapped in the train station for days with thousands upon thousands of other holiday travelers...