A Stroll Down Tunxi's Old Street

BEFORE I went to Tunxi in Huangshan City, Anhui Province, a friend said to me "You can't not go to the Old Street. Take a walk through it and you'll get a marvelous feeling." But he didn't tell me how wonderful it was. In my imagination, Tunxi was a small sleepy town nestled among verdant mountains, quiet and idyllic.     

Through the Mist—I Recall a Visit to West Lake

IT has been many years since the last time I visited West Lake in Hangzhou but it is still fresh in my menlory. It was in late spring, a cloudy and drizzly day. I did not feel like going at first, but later went along as two veteran editors insisted upon going. It didn't take long to get to the lake. This was my first time to appreciate the landscape of the region south of the Yangtze River at leisure. The air was damp and chilly as we strolled along the bank. Mist and fog hovered over the lake, and it was hard to distinguish the water from the sky. At a kiosk on the     

IMPROVING LIFE FOR WOMEN

I noticed a photo in the exhibition room of village history in North Yangjiawa,Liyuan Township, Tongxian County, Beijing. It was the epitome of the typical northern countryside:shabby houses, bumpy dirt roads and heaps of garbage. I didn't feel strange about it, as I had once lived in such a village fur more than 1,000 days and nights during the Cultural Revolution when educated urban youths were encouraged tn work in the countryside and mountains. What astonished me was the words under this photo: North Yangjiawa in 1993. I couldn't imagine how this tremendous change could happen in only three years.     

Eternal Love Comes from Sincerity

IT was a time of happiness three years ago when Qian Kui, leader of the Chinese Gymnastics Team, took out a platinum ring with an inlaid diamond from a small velvet box and placed it on his wife's finger. Qian, a senior team leader in his 50s, said to his wife with deep feeling, "Twenty-five years ago when we got married, we just put our single beds together. I didn't bring you any gift, which I have long regretted. Today is the Silver anniversary of our marriage. Please accept     

Views on Middle Aged Couples

AWOMAN calls a women's hotline: "My husband and I have always been compatible. Now our son is almost 10 and my husband still wants to have sex! This makes me sick. I don't know what to do. Help me!" Another woman calls in tears: "My husband is an ordinary man and used to lead a normal life like anyone else. One day, he told me he would try something else to develop his career. I supported him. Finally, his efforts paid off. But soon after, he began having an affair. He didn't deny it but he said he wouldn't divorce me. Why did this happen to     

Learning to Understand Love

I'M still young, but I've experienced a lot emotionally; I've been married twice and had extramarital affairs. Thinking back on the past, I was really a fool back then, continually mired in confusion. I had my first love affair about 10 years ago when I was a university student, and didn't know much about life.     

Women's Day—Othello

THE tickets were already sold out when I learned that the British Royal Theater was staging Othello—one of the four great Shakespearean tragedies—in early March in Beijing. A friend of mine kindly offered his ticket to me. He said he didn't understand English, and that his daughter was going to perform in a play on that same night on the same stage with the famous star Xia Yu. I knew he was just trying to make me feel better about accepting the ticket. He had already been to his daughter's performance twice. Nonetheless, I was very happy to get the ticket. As he handed it to me, he asked, "Isn't it a bit irrational to put on such a show on     

Where Is My Home?

WHEN I was asked where my home was the name of the unknown county would always escape my lips. By then I had been in this fancy metropolis for quite a few years. It had accompanied me to do everything and my family, my habits and whatever I had had all been merged with the city. But still I didn't know why I believed that remote and nameless village     

Threads of Youth Needlework Helps Woman Recall the Past

MAYBE I should be grateful to my mother. When I was very young, she taught me how to knit socks. Using a kind of white nylon thread and a needle made from a kind of hairpin, a durable sock could be made. Before long I had mastered the skill, then knit a pair of socks for each of my family members. However, my mother seemed to be a collector of socks and didn't allow me to stop knitting them until I came to hate this task. Luckily, my mother changed her interest. One day while she was     

My Cares in the World

1 I had lived at Shuiguo Lake in Wuhan for several years, when one day a wasp flew on my balcony. I was sitting there, reading my newspaper. Because I had been stung by wasps many times during my childhood, I had a lingering fear of wasps. I hurried to cover my face with the newspaper, but the wasp flew' unharmed onto my bonsai. I looked at it quietly and it also looked at me. Then it stuck up its tail and lowered its head to drink from the pot. Once it     

Emancipation Began When Foot-Binding Ended

MY late grandmother was one of the last generation of women who had bound feet. In the beginning of this century, she was born in a small remote village inhabited by the Mongol and Han nationalities. In those years her mother bound her childish feet tightly, using strips of cloth, so her feet remained small and pointed. Although I didn't know much about life when I was a child, I often felt constrained at the sight of my grandmother's bound feet. While I was growing up, I read some books about women's emancipation and started to be more concerned about the fate of women. Chinese women have struggled up a long     

读者来信(英文)

Dear Women of China I studied some Chinese(Mandarin)before, and I liked how you referred to a phrase or saying in Chinese,explained it,and uesd it in a sentence.This way,my understanding of Chinese culture can continue to improve, even though I am here at home reading in English.     

From Pupa to Butterfly

IN front of me is the Floating Stone, an autobiography-like novel written by a farmer writer. With a not very eye-catching cover and a somewhat baffling name, the book is not quite interesting to me. Care-freely, I took up the book and scanned it. Unexpectedly, I was attracted and finished reading the     

Health Consultation in China

ONE Sunday morning, I noticed some people gathered at a clearing outside a school in which my family had an apartment. Feeling curious, I joined them to find that some young dentists, wearing their white coats, were offering free consultations for people. They were selling toothbrushes and dental floss at the same time. One of my teeth was bothering me. It always felt odd when I bit something cold. I consulted with a young dentist, who was wearing a pair of glasses. He asked me many questions like when had it begun to hurt, if I felt the pain, how long it had been since I had it filled the previous time. He asked me to open my mouth and checked the tooth carefully. "You should have your     

Small Generation Gap

IT was while I was making milk for my son that I discovered the generation gap between us. A little thing of two years and three months, my son stood on a big chair I brought him and joined me to make milk. Holding a small spoon in his plump little hand, he scooped flour out of a jar and poured it into the feeding bottle and then scooped milk powder and     

The Changing Fate of Cloth Shoes

ONE day I found by chance one of my old photos taken 30 years ago. In it I was still a serious 17-year-old girl with my hair in two short braids and dressed in a blue cloth coat, brown corduroys and a pair of black cloth shoes each fastened by a strap at the side My eyes fixed on the shoes and lingered for quite a long time. A smile quietly crawled over my lips. Isn't it the fashionable "little girl's shoe" which is expected to prevail in the market this year?     

Notes on a Trip to Japan

"WHAT'S your impression of Japan? How has it advanced?" I was repeatedly asked the same questions by my friends and colleagues after I returned to Beijing. As a neighboring country of China and a world economic superpower, Japan is still a remote and unfamiliar place to most Chinese. In November of 1996, I was invited by the Japanese government to participate in the Asian-Pacific Journalist's Seminar on Women and Media. My one-week schedule     

I Return to my Second Home

LAST September, Chai Ran, my classmate and roommate in Shanxi, and I took a train to Yuanping to visit our second home. Twenty-five years ago, we 31 students from Beijing went to live in the Xiadalin Village in Yuanping, Shanxi Province, where we lived and labored for seven years. In our railway car, Chai told me that Yuanping, to which the Xiadalin Village belonged in the past administration, was celebrating its emergence as a city. Chai had married a villager and had returned to Beijing only two years ago. Her son and daughter, who were both born in the village, had just visited there and had brought her the news. Although I knew that Yuanping had changed a great deal, I was still unable to imagine what it had become, since I had left eighteen years ago. In my memory, it was only a series of streets with a     

信箱(英文)

Sexual Harassment, When No Means No hit home《性骚扰,女性不再沉默》令我深思What a great magazine! It is so good, well-written, and has great pictures. I liked the articles on sexual harassment. All the articles were interesting and I loved them! When I received your magazine, it made my day. I have been in and out of the hospital all summer. I have had a tough summer! Sexual Harassment, When No Means No hit home. I have been sexually harassed many times! From the time I was a teenager. On the job, I encountered the same thing. I kept quiet, because I felt no one would believe me. I never told anyone. My husband would say it was my fault. I hope I am not the only one out with this problem. I also love the pictures in your magazine. It gave me insight.Cindy White, USA     

A Chef for 34 Years

FOREIGNERS who have been to Beijing are probably familiar with the Beijing International Hotel near the main railway station. It's the four-star hotel where I work as a chief cook. My job is to manage nine kitchens—both Chinese and Western. I have been a chef for 34 years. After graduated from school in 1964, I studied Chinese cuisine for three years. I believed that it was a job worth doing. In the past, people looked down on this occupation; they thought it was a low-class job because cooks were always serving other people. I, however, found the job very interesting. After all, I reasoned, everyone needs to eat. If we could make eating into a kind of art or a science, eating could become an act of culture. People engaged in the food industry treat the act of eating with a respect that most people cooking at home do not feel. But for those of us who work in prestigious hotels whose guests come from all over the world and have different customs and tastes, it is our job to put the Chinese cooking cultu