What the Chinese Don't Eat Read Online Free

phone-in programme, I used to get so many calls and letters complaining about how difficult it was to be a good woman. I wanted to know why, so I did some research. I asked my male listeners two questions: 1) How many good women have there been in your family? 2) What is your view of a good woman?
    Three weeks later I had received nearly 1,000 replies. Fewer than 20 of them said that they had had good women in their lives. I was shocked. I could not understand why – until I read the five requirements for a good woman that they gave in their letters.
    A good woman, they thought, should 1) never go out and express her views to society; 2) provide a son for her husband’s family tree; 3) never lose her temper and always be soft and smile at her men; 4) never burn food when she cooks and never mix colours when she washes; 5) be good in bed and have a good figure to show off.
    I could not and still cannot imagine how many women in this world could match up to that standard. I realised that I for one was certainly not a good woman in most Chinese men’s eyes. Because I had a well-known talk show, I was ‘too open to be good’.
    At that point, I thought there must be something wrong with Chinese culture and education, which could not make men and women equal. Then last year I met a Chinese man who grew up in the west. I asked him what his view of a good womanwas. His answer was exactly the same as that of the un-westerneducated Chinese men.
    I realised that no degree or PhD could change a traditional view. Did we realise, I asked, how high a price women who wanted to be good paid for this stand?
    Someone sent me the diary of a dying Chinese girl back in 1990. Her father abused her. When she asked for help from her mother, she was told to ‘be quiet’, otherwise people would call her a bad woman. The only way for the poor girl to avoid her father’s attacks and still ‘be a good girl’ was to harm herself so that she could be sent to hospital, where she would be safe. One day she found that the touch of a fly was so much more beautiful than that of a human that she tried to keep a fly as a pet. She was so frightened at the thought of being sent home that she killed herself by rubbing a dead fly into the cut in her arm. Her name was Hong-Xue; she was 17.
    In 1995 I was asked for help. A married couple in the countryside could not have a baby. It had been nearly three years. I could hardly believe the reasons they gave me: they never touched each other during their marriage.
    I asked the man: ‘Have you ever wanted to touch your wife?’ ‘Yes, all the time.’ ‘Why haven’t you?’ ‘I want to be a good man.’ His voice was very low.
    ‘Do you know the difference between a ‘husband’ and a ‘man’ with a woman?’ He did not say anything.
    I turned to his wife: ‘Have you ever wanted to be hugged and kissed by him?’ ‘Why do you ask me this? I am a good woman, as everybody knows in our village.’ From her eyes I could see I was a ‘bad woman’.
    I asked in a more diplomatic way. ‘Do you know where you are from?’ She looked at me as if I was stupid. ‘From my parents.’
    ‘Do you know why and how?’
    ‘They sleep together.’
    ‘Do you believe they lay there without touching each other?’
    ‘How could I know? Why do you ask me about such sexual hooligan things?’ I could see anger in her eyes now.
    ‘OK, OK, do you know how pigs and chickens produce their babies?’ I felt so sorry to ask her this, but I had to. ‘Of course! But they are animal, and we are …’ She did not finish her sentence.
    ‘Yes, we are a kind of animal too.’ I was sure she had got it by now. To be certain, I drew a picture to show them what should happen when a married couple sleep together. Neither of them looked at my drawing, but they picked it up and left. Eighteen months later, they came to visit me with their lovely baby boy.
    I think if a woman knows how to love, how to feel love and how to try to love, she