Long before the word “feminist” existed, a ten-year-old boy in a Chinese novel announced that girls were simply better than boys. He didn’t mean better at sums. He meant they were made of better stuff.
Here’s how we first hear it, in Chapter 2. A gossiping antiques dealer is telling a friend about the strange boy in the Jia family:
女兒是水做的骨肉，男子是泥做的骨肉。我見了女兒便清爽，見了男子便覺濁臭逼人！
Girls are made of water, pure and clear. Boys are made of mud, foul and dull. My soul feels refreshed when I see a girl, but seeing a boy makes me feel absolutely filthy!
The dealer thinks it’s hilarious. His verdict: the boy is “destined to be a playboy.”
Jia Baoyu never takes it back. In Chapter 19 he calls himself a “muddy creature.” In Chapter 20 the narrator tells us what he really believes: that “the pure and refined spirit of Heaven and Earth was bestowed on womankind alone, while men were nothing but dregs and scum.” He won’t even boss his younger half-brother around, which a big brother in his world was expected to do, because he sees no point in ranking one lump of mud above another.
Put that next to the world he lived in. Daughters could be sold. Xiren, the maid closest to him, was sold into the house as a child because her family had nothing to eat. Girls weren’t taught to sit the examinations, couldn’t hold office, and were married off by their parents. Into that world walks a boy, heir to one of the great families, who says the girls are the real treasure and the men are the mud.
So is Baoyu a feminist?
It’s a fair question, isn’t it? Perhaps he is a rebel against the old order. Maybe he really is a champion for women.
But read the line one more time. Notice who he’s talking about, and notice what he’s praising them for.
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