Page 183 - Chinese Woman Living and Working
P. 183
170 ANNE E.MCLAREN
Her beancurd tastes like salty meat,
But the rice I make has grass and seeds in it, My skin is too rough and dirty,
how can I be a match for this?
(lines 47–50)
In the bottom are river snails,
In the middle is raw rice,
The rice is cooked on the top and raw underneath.
I eat the hard uncooked rice,
The mother-in-law likes her rice a little hard,
The father-in-law likes his rice a little soft,
So how can I manage, how can I cook for them?
(lines 58–68)
These laments demonstrate the importance of the acquisition of female domestic skills for
the ‘face’ of her natal family and for the proper functioning of the marriage system, which
relied on the importation of female labour through marriage. The bride’s work here is
constructed primarily as service to the parents-in-law and adaptation to their household
customs and protocols. Above all, the bride fears the carping judgement of the senior
women in the household. Women here are assessed by their physical strength, and
competency at household skills and diplomacy The hyperbolic and often comic
protestations of the bride at her ineptness need not be taken literally. Nonetheless, the
anxieties of the bride, at this crucial turning point in her life, are very real.
Another women’s cult that reflected the anxiety of young women about marriage is the
cult to the Maiden of the Lavatory. One of the humblest tasks carried out by women in
China was the carrying of the buckets of human waste from the house to a manure pit. In
the case of the lower Yangtze delta, the manure pit is a clay vat sunk deep into the ground
in land at the rear of the residence. After a few days it can be used as fertilizer, an
essential ingredient in crop production. The second case to be examined here deals with a
cult surrounding women’s essential work in supplying the manure pit. From 1999 to
2000, Chen Qinjian of East China Normal University, Shanghai, carried out an
investigation of the cult to the Kengsan Maiden, the Goddess of the Lavatory, in two
villages in Songjiang County outside Shanghai. 11
In these villages the goddess of the pit is known as Keng San guniang or Lavatory Pit
12
Third Maiden. It is believed that this cult was prevalent in many areas of China before
13
1949. Chen interviewed women in their forties and fifties who had participated in the
Keng San Maiden cult in their youth. The ritual performance was carried out annually on
the fifteenth day of the Chinese New Year, a day that marks the formal end of New Year
celebrations. The activity is called by the participants ‘Inviting [down] the Kengsan
maiden’ (qing Kengsan guniang). Only young unmarried girls took part in the cult. The
girls meet in the living room of someone’s home. Rice bran is scattered on the dining
table. Two girls would then take an empty bamboo basket used for holding rice and carry
it to the lavatory pit. They would stand on both sides of the basket and hold it with one