Lihua*, sat at the wooden windowsill listening to American pop music and copying quotes from Chinese feminists, such as Lu Yin and Qiu Jin, into a small purple notebook.
This was a daily activity for Lihua, as she ran two popular social media accounts dedicated to perpetuating feminist ideals on China’s most active online platforms: Weibo, WeChat, and Xiaohongshu. Her posts sometimes disappeared hours after they appeared online, censored for undermining the CCP’s position that gender equality issues had been “solved” in China. Still, Lihua assured me, the important messages reached millions nationwide.
I met Lihua when I arrived in Zhaoxing, a Dong minority village in southeast Guizhou, China, as the newest volunteer at a small hostel. It was May 2023, five months after China’s zero-COVID policy ended. Lihua, my new roommate, had already been there for two weeks and had much to share about our two male co-workers.
“They are typical zhi nan,” she said as she helped me unroll my bedding. Zhi nan (直男), literally meaning “straight man,” refers to an overly-confident, unemotional, and even chauvinistic man.
“I told them that I was single, and the first thing they asked me was my age,” Lihua said, recounting a conversation with our co-workers.
“As I said, typical zhi nan. This is why I will never get married.”
As China’s birth rate declines to its lowest point in history and the number of couples getting married drops to a nearly 40-year low, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is encouraging young women to marry and have children. Yet many Millennial and Gen Z women in China no longer view marriage as a necessary, or even desired, aspect of life.
Lihua was 28, jobless, and – like many women in China – intent against marriage.
Xiaomei*, a close friend I met on the other side of China two months earlier in Wanning, a small “surfer town” on Hainan, China’s island province, felt the same way.
Xiaomei worked at a hostel near the water run by a hippie couple that had left mainland China for a more relaxing lifestyle. The “Resting Paradise,” where I stayed in February 2023, had chic, white walls adorned with green linen curtains, large windows overlooking a quaint lawn littered with surfboards and yoga mats, and light mahogany furniture.
Xiaomei and I bonded instantly. Our shared love for adventure and feminism and chocolate-coconut lattes – a staple on Hainan, where many of China’s cocoa beans grew – incited one of the deepest friendships I had in China, and we spent countless nights chatting until the early hours of the morning.
During these chats, Xiaomei introduced me to the online multitudes of Chinese feminists.
She showed me interviews with Ueno Chizuko, a Japanese feminist icon who spoke out about the institution of marriage in East Asian countries, a TV show called “Sisters Who Make Waves” that featured women over 30 competing to join a music group, and countless social media accounts dedicated to highlighting past female novelists, activists, and cultural figures.
When we departed at the end of my week in Hainan, we promised to meet again. In April, I joined her on the next stint of her “gap year” in Xi’an and Chengdu.
On our first day traveling together in Xi’an, a man on the subway took a discreet picture of our legs. Xiaomei glared at him and asked, “Why do you think you have the right to take pictures of other people’s bodies? Delete that picture off your phone right now.”
The man feigned innocence. “There is no picture on my phone,” he said.
“I know there is,” Xiaomei retorted, her voice rising. A few curious subway occupants looked up from their phones, but most kept their heads down to avoid trouble.
The policeman on the subway wove through the crowd toward us from the other end of the car. Xiaomei sank back in her chair. When the police approached and asked what was wrong, Xiaomei said nothing. He pressed again, but Xiaomei kept shaking her head and saying nothing. Finally, he left.
When we departed the subway, I commented on how I appreciated that the subway police at least seemed as though they wanted to help.
She scoffed. Then, she asked me if I had seen the “subway incident” a few years earlier in Xi’an.
When I informed her that no, I had not, she explained. In 2021, a guard had dragged a woman off the subway car by her arms, exposing her naked body to other passengers, when she refused to leave the car after being “rude” to other passengers. Xiaomei said that the woman was likely protecting herself from sexual harassment by a male passenger.
I was horrified, but this was not an isolated incident. China’s authorities have a long track record of targeting women who attempt to combat sexual harassment on public transportation. In 2015, the five woman – later dubbed the “Feminist Five” – were arrested for 37 days after handing out anti-sexual harassment posters on the subway. A study conducted by professors at City University of Hong Kong found that over 80 percent of women in China reported experiencing sexual abuse on public transport. Although China’s #MeToo movement has helped women speak out against this abuse, Xiaomei assured me that it still occurs all too often.
Three days later, when we arrived in Chengdu, Xiaomei showed me more about China’s gender dynamics.
She took me to the Xiang Qin Jiao, the “lovers” or “matchmakers” corner in the Chengdu People’s Park. While others went to the corner for tourism or dating, Xiaomei had a specific purpose: she wanted me to observe China’s marriage market. These corners exist in many Chinese cities, including Shanghai and Nanjing, and represent a modern twist on China’s ancient matchmaking practices.
Rows of posters advertised young Chinese people looking for a “soulmate.” Older relatives of young Chinese people loitered around, scouring the crowd for eligible suitors for their children and grandchildren.
We surveyed the biographical posters lined up on bulletin boards. The plaques boasted metrics about the individuals that to my eyes looked more akin to a criminal investigation record than an online dating profile: their height, weight, income, academic background, whether they owned a house or a car, which city they had eligibility to live in (their hukou), and their desired attributes in a spouse.
The men, as Xiamei pointed out, had unrealistic standards for their partners. The posters for males with average statistics listed in their “criteria for a mate” sections that they sought women with academic backgrounds and incomes significantly higher than their own. Xiaomei pointed out the hyper-misogynistic cards, boasting requests such as “never married before,” “weighs less than 45 kilograms,” and “obedient wives.”
Most of the women, conversely, set low standards or even failed to list criteria at all.
After a few minutes, middle-aged men surrounded us. I, a young foreign girl, intrigued them. They asked me probing questions and provided unsolicited advice about “marrying now while I am young and beautiful” to “ensure I have a man who can provide for me.” Xiaomei scowled and pulled me away.
We continued to explore the city until past midnight. The humid air, despite the drizzle, had a summer thickness that reminded me of home and we walked around for hours holding hands (as is the norm for female friends in China), trying snacks, and talking about our lives as women in the United States and China.
Xiaomei spoke about how many Chinese women didn’t eat anything to meet unrealistic beauty standards but had no energy to engage in society. She told me that our incident on the subway was far from rare and men took sly pictures of her all the time. She even confided that, while working in the hostel, a guest had sexually assaulted her friend. When her friend told the female owner, she assured her that the guest was just overly friendly and invited him over for dinner the following night.
When I started talking about the United States, Xiaomei was shocked that Americans, too, were far from “solving” gender equality.
After a moment, she sighed. “But at least you can talk about it. Most of my friends, even though they are also worried, say that we have already solved ‘gender equality,’ too,” she said. “They have never learned that they can say otherwise.”
*Note: All names have been changed and identifying information has been anonymized to protect individuals’ identities.