Takeaway Chinese, where you can take some Chinese away and experience progress day by day.
Takeaway Chinese, we will promise you a difference.
你好,欢迎收听随行汉语。 Welcome to Takeaway Chinese.
I'm Nian Honglin with Steve Hatherly in the studio.
Hi, Steve.
Hi, how are you doing?
Thanks for having me again.
Thank you for joining the show.
It's always fun doing the show, sharing Chinese language.
But I also like to take the chance to check out with you.
How have you been these days?
Have you been enjoying your holidays and everything?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's kind of both.
It's a relaxing and a busy time of year.
Yes, yes, as always.
During the holiday, right?
But I noticed that Beijing gets a little less busy during the holiday season because of course everybody's traveling and everybody's on the move.
Yes, but a lot of people also travel to Beijing, but they are most likely traveling to tourist destinations, which makes the residential area packed area of the city a bit relaxing.
Yeah, that's right.
The tourist areas around Beijing are well, a lot of them on the central axis, the major ones right.
Like the Temple of Heaven and all the ones up to the what's the most northern historical site on the central axis.
It goes beyond the drum tower, right?
Yeah, it goes way up there.
But anyway, that's what.
When you go to any of those spots, you'll see tons of people all concentrated in there.
But the cool thing is once you kind of get away from those spots a little bit.
You don't feel the impact of the tourists.
You know what I'm talking about?
Yes.
Yes.
It's a strange feeling.
It's like two worlds blended together, but not entirely together.
It's like they're puzzles.
Yeah.
But if you stumble upon a tourist attraction, you will know it immediately.
Yes, yes.
It's that crowded.
And as for personal lives, because when you're working, you're working.
But when you're enjoying your life, you're making decisions based on your personal preferences.
You can do a lot of different things.
And for example, during the past holidays, I have been reading some fun books about life. about how to find the inner self that can support you in a workplace, no matter if you're, for example, working mom, taking care of your professional life, or if you are working at home, supporting your family, doing all the housework and planning for the family, something like that.
You just find the things that can support you to do what you do.
Yeah, those kind of books are really cool because it's It unlocks something in your brain, I guess when you realize that there are other people in the world that are exactly like you and they're going through things that are similar to the things that you are going through.
And it's kind of a funny thing about your brain.
Not you.
I mean, people.
If we say that information out loud, everybody knows that, right?
It's common knowledge.
There are plenty of other people in the world that are going through the same thing that you're going through, but yet we don't really know it.
And we often feel alone, or we often feel like I'm the only one going through this thing and nobody else can understand.
And that in itself is an empowering thing.
Yes.
And it's different kind of perspective and it also motivates you to do different things.
For instance, during holidays i went to had a session, a class of flower arranging.
Oh, i've always wanted to do that.
Yeah, i never thought i had that in me.
I've never imagined myself as a visually aesthetically talented kind of girl And, for example, I'm not good at painting.
Are you good at home interior design, like arranging your stuff?
No, not really.
I always arrange them from a perspective that is functionally efficient.
So I put things based on how I would use them, how I would apply them in my daily life, not based on the color matching and stuff.
Right.
Also goes to my closet.
So I didn't imagine myself enjoying flower arranging that much.
Same goes to I didn't imagine myself enjoying indoor climbing that much.
I experienced that during the holiday as well.
And I realized one can do a lot of things.
They can explore the world the way they wanted in a lot of different ways and really enjoy them.
I think flower arranging must be one of the most important peaceful cathartic stress-free, quiet experiences you could possibly have.
There's nothing high stress about that, there's nothing tense about that, right.
Well, at the beginning i was a little bit tense because i was trying to compete with the girl sitting next to me, but that's my problem, that's not our arranging problem sure, and i think i have discovered a lot of different sides, different aspects of myself, as well as finding out the inner girl, the strong and trying to be strong and athletic didn't manage to climb that wall that well, but still.
Not the first time, but who knows the second time.
So from that, and also I found the relatively more soft and spiritually calm side of myself.
And I realize that is what a lot of people, a lot of especially young female, are doing in this country.
They're discovering who they are in different ways.
And now it's really a good time to do that, because a lot, a lot of new opportunities are opening to women in the country and around the world.
Can you feel a difference in China's, Maybe now, as a independent successful, working woman, versus maybe 10, 15 years ago?
Can you feel a difference in the climate?
I can feel a difference, not only between now and 10, 20 years ago, because during that time, around 20, 30 years ago, it's my mom's generation that are being the dominating, the pillar demographic of the society.
And at that time, of course, women are already very much encouraged to hit the workplace, to be the one who is doing the heavy lifting, metaphorically speaking.
And we have a saying, 妇女能顶半边天, ever since the founding of the People's Republic of China.
That means 妇女 is women.
能 means can or capable of.
顶 is to push up and hold.
It's kind of like if there is a roof on your top, and yet it's just a plate instead of a real roof.
You have to use your upper strength power to make sure it does not fall.
I don't know, what is that term?
Support?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Support.
It's you need to support it.
And 半边 is half of.
And 天 is sky.
So it means women support half of the sky on top of us.
We can at least shoulder half of the country's responsibility.
That's a great expression, isn't it?
Yeah, it's a funny one.
I can't think of an English equivalent for that.
妇女能顶半边天 And that applies to you as well.
Yes, yes.
So that has been the slogan, the way of thinking, or at least the way that we wish to go to the direction we wish to work towards, since the beginning of the founding of the country.
Yet, in my mom's generation, it's already true.
It's very much true.
My mom is a very successful cardiovascular doctor.
She's also the department head, and she's responsible for a lot of things.
She's working really hard.
She works outside of the country.
And that situation is not rare for her generation already.
But at that time there was still a lot of traditional way of looking at female gender, in the sense that in a hospital, in the position of a doctor, you mean.
No, no.
I mean for women in general.
The idea is that, no matter how successful you are, people are still expecting you to start a family, have a kid.
They say something like it's expected that you support your husband and your teacher kids, no matter if you are a successful working lady or not.
So being successful or being quote unquote happy in a family is a very important part of women's the assessment of how happy and how successful a woman is.
Yeah, that's completely unfair.
Right.
I think that concept existed in Western culture too for a long time, although I think now we can say it's been gone for a long time.
But it's unfair to suggest to someone being home taking care of the family thing should be enough to satisfy your life.
Or suggesting that no matter how successful your career is, if you are not doing the supporting husband and taking care of family thing, you are not really happy.
Deep down, you must feel there is a hole in your heart.
It's rather presumptuous.
Right.
So but that was still the dominating idea for my mom's generation.
Yet for our generation that kind of suggestion is definitely front upon, if not harshly battled against by not only women but men in the society.
Changes in the using of language, changes in the ways we describe a woman.
For example, traditionally or it has been the case for at least thousands of years when you want to praise a woman, you would use words like beautiful 美丽.
温柔.
温柔.
温柔 means tender.
Sweet and tender and take care of and considerate.
Tǐ tiē.
Tǐ tiē.
Tǐ tiē means considerate.
And also focus on details.
Xì xīn.
Like detail-oriented?
Detail-oriented.
Oh, okay.
How do you say that one again?
Xì xīn.
Xì xīn.
Perfect.
Xì means thin.
Xīn is heart.
I think it says that your heart is able to notice the very delicate and thin details.
Okay, okay.
In that direction.
Yeah.
So, xì xīn.
Oh, because we also have a word of cú xīn.
Cú means thick.
Cu Xin.
Cu Xin means people neglect the details.
They tend to forget about the even important details.
They make mistakes.
Not because they do not have the ability, but that they're not paying enough attention.
Xi Xin would be detail-oriented in a good way.
You are taking care of the details in the right way.
What I'm not hearing is strong, independent, powerful.
Yeah.
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Even, I think, 10 years ago.
We do not tend to use these to describe women or, more importantly, we didn't use to use these words as a goal for young girls to work towards.
That is more important.
Yeah.
Setting an early precedent.
Yes.
Yeah.
Letting them know, letting young girls know that they can be anything they want.
They can be those things, too.
And that would be a wonderful thing.
Yeah.
And those changes happen in recent years.
I feel more and more clear and stronger and stronger today.
To see that, for instance, young parents out there are sending their young kids, young girls, to karate lessons.
Right.
You see a lot of girls in karate lessons and kung fu lessons and they are encouraged to play football instead of dancing.
They're sending their girls to horseback riding.
Yeah.
And even sometimes hockey games.
Good.
Yeah.
I see those changes and I am very happy.
Is it seen the other way around too?
Yes.
Yeah, that's cool.
Yeah, where boys can kind of try out figure skating if they want.
Yes, yes.
Or maybe go to some flower arranging classes or something like that.
As well, very soothing.
Yeah, that's really cool.
That's good to see, isn't it?
Yes, and in Chinese we have the saying, 金国不让虚美。
That is also a traditional saying.
Well, the core idea is that women are as good as men.
And 金国 is an ancient way of representing female, whereas 须眉, 须眉 basically is beard and mustache and long eyebrow.
I don't know why eyebrow has something to do with it, but definitely it is representing male.
But see, in that one we're still trying to say yes, women are as good as men, or yes, women can hold up half of the responsibility.
But gradually we stopped setting it as a standard and started to say we can be anything we want.
We do not have to compare ourselves with. with anybody.
You have your own standard.
I know exactly.
Or at least I think I understand what you might be talking about.
I've brought this up on different shows before where we will celebrate, for example, we'll talk about a pilot and we'll use the term female pilot.
And of course you know we're celebrating the successes of that woman's career and Typically perhaps, being male dominated.
And I see that as a positive thing.
But hopefully we can get to the point someday where we don't have to celebrate that anymore.
Do you understand what I mean?
Right.
Like where it's cool and it's great that we are.
But the day that we don't have to do that anymore means it's become normal.
Norm where anybody can do anything and it's not considered to be a great success anymore.
That's the point.
I think you're totally right.
I just I don't know why it gets under my skin when we put like we feel like it in society, We have to put the word female In front of the minority situation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I totally get what you're saying.
But I do have to also acknowledge the fact that it's a ongoing process.
We are already in the age that the dominated idea or the idea that people would have to agree upon even if secretly they might not think that's what they want they'll still have to agree that women can be anything they want, they can be powerful, they can choose to be single or to be married, to have kids or not.
But see, the thing is, i think in this we are already at that stage, but it's still also a ongoing process.
We need to do more.
Like you said, we need to go to the stage where we stop celebrating the female successful figures, which sounds like a horrible thing to say, but we don't mean it.
We don't mean it that way.
I remember And I tell this story a lot.
When my sister was a hotel executive, she was very high up with a major hotel chain.
And I remember her telling me that she found it hard dating because she held a position of power, you know, in that industry.
And she said this is just her opinion, that men tended to find it intimidating that she would hold a higher rank than Not within the hotel itself.
But just you know, like in general, social status in general.
Yeah.
And she found it to be very, very frustrating that yeah men, Canadian men, found that to be a hard thing to deal with.
And that would have been about, gosh, maybe 20 years ago.
But hopefully in Canada, that kind of thing.
And I think it is.
I think it's changing now, too.
I see that changing in my life.
I mean, my friends, my friends, friends, they are looking at different types of relationship.
Girls older than boys girls, girls earning more than boys.
For sure, these things are already happening in my life.
I live in beijing.
It's a mega city, it's the capital city in the country.
I cannot say for all of the people living in, for example, rural areas, or they are well, i cannot say for them, but i definitely want this kind of situation to happen everywhere in the country and around the world.
100 agree.
Yes.
And there are a lot of different aspects when it comes to empowering women, empowering the vulnerable group.
See, we're still thinking of women sometimes as the vulnerable group.
And there are so many aspects.
And China has been working to improve the situation in a lot of aspects that the government have a say at.
For example, you have to hire women.
You cannot have gender discrimination when you're hiring.
For example, for the same job, same position, you cannot offer different salary just because of their gender.
And also the country is encouraging everybody to take part in the supporting and caring of the family.
We're even, well, that is a funny anecdote.
We're even changing the 母婴式 into a 育婴式.
I know it's a minor change, but I really love it.
So 母 is mother, 母亲.
That is an official way of saying mother.
It's like the difference.
母亲 and 妈妈 is like the difference between mother and mommy.
Okay, so 母, 婴 is an infant.
婴儿, an infant.
母婴室, 室 is a room.
So 母婴室 is a room for mommy and her babies.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
So that room, that room is seen very commonly in hospitals and public facilities like libraries and also, of course, shopping malls.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Okay.
I was thinking in the house or something like a room dedicated for that.
Okay.
No, it's in the public and also in a lot of different companies.
They would provide that for the mommy who need to take care of their kid or for moms who are still doing breastfeeding.
So they will have a place for privacy and stuff, but they are changing the rooms into yuyin means to take care of, to rear a kid.
So it's a room for... For the dads now too.
Yes, for both parents.
And of course, there are cubes there.
You can still do the breastfeeding with your privacy.
It's the kind of improvement that showcases how the entire society is trying to make sure the responsibility of taking care of a family does not only fall on the female.
Yeah.
We saw that in other parts of the world, too.
I think there were stories from Australia.
They made that change in shopping malls, too.
Maybe Thailand I saw was an example of that.
And in the UAE was maybe even one more example of that.
I saw where dads were now given a space as well to take their kids outside, which is, I think you're right, that's a great way to put it.
Yeah, sure it might be a small change within the shopping establishments or wherever it happens to be, but it's really a significant reflection on a change in attitudes or perceptions of roles in society.
Yes, and I'm glad to see that happening because it's...
Nice just to imagine that our future generation would live in a society like that.
I saw those stories and I thought, I wonder how dads felt about that.
Because, sure, now you've got a space where you can go and take care of the kid.
Yeah.
But before, it was kind of a pretty good excuse.
I'm sorry, I can't go.
The dads are enjoying not specifically this.
I don't know if they're enjoying this, but they enjoy their time with their kids too.
And now they have the opportunity of taking paternity leave here in the country.
It's legal that...
Dads have 15 days of paternity leave in different places.
Some places five days, some places 15 days.
So you can take care of the newborn baby.
Think about that.
All the new dads must be very excited to have a newborn baby.
And now you have time to you can spend time with them.
You can adjust to the new role, let alone taking care of your significant other, who will thank you for it.
If you do not do that for the rest of your life.
It depends on personality.
But for me, I would definitely nag about it all the time.
So it's best change for everybody.
Yeah, absolutely.
Besides that, another very interesting phenomenon we see in the society is that I don't know about in Canada or any other Western countries, but in China 10, 20 years ago, we used to believe that age are not equal to both genders.
If you're a man, you age...
It's kind of okay, especially when you age well.
But for women it was predominantly considered that women over the age of 40, you're pretty going downhill.
It's no longer.
You do not have the same kind of charm and charisma in your personality and everything.
Even have like old sayings about those things like over the age of 40, oh man, like good wine would be better and better, but women over the age of 40 well, they're just.
You're going downhill.
Yeah, i think that exists in the west too.
I think even hollywood would be a good example of that, because Stories will often get written.
I don't know if you know who George Clooney is.
There's so many stories written about George Clooney, about how handsome he is as he gets older, and Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.
But you don't see a lot of those stories celebrating how women look beautiful at the age of 55 or 60 or 48 or whatever.
You often see...
Perhaps criticism or, you know, oh, look at her now.
You won't believe what she looks like.
And they'll put two pictures side by side, one where she was like 26 and another where she's 49 or whatever.
And it's just so unfair.
And I think you're right.
I think that I think that still exists in the West, to be honest with you.
I think it definitely still exists, even in China.
But we also see the society developing towards the opposite direction.
That is to celebrate successful, mature women.
Not to the point that I think those successful women deserve to be celebrated.
Not yet.
But we are moving towards that.
We are celebrating the Chinese term older sister 姐姐.
Jiejie is now seen as a way to address those ladies who are with a bit of age and a lot of wisdom and experience and successful.
And I think it has something to do with a popular, very popular variety show in the country.
Well, at that time the show was inviting women over the age of 30, which is not surprising senior at all, it's just borderline middle-aged women.
That's not even middle-aged, that's still really young, really young, but over the age of 30, and you definitely would see celebrities at their 40, 50 and recently even someone almost 70 joining the show and showcasing their charm, showcasing how beautiful and how strong and powerful they are and how charming they are.
So 姐姐 is becoming from a simple way of addressing elder sister to kind of a praising kind of term.
Like a respectful term.
Yes, yes, yes.
Yet, do you want to be called that though?
I don't mind.
Yeah?
There's a term in Korean called ajashi.
It means like middle-aged man.
And children will use it.
And it's totally appropriate.
That's a different... Totally appropriate coming from a child.
But even still...
I was like, don't call me that.
Don't let me hear that.
That's why I asked.
You know it's a term of respect, but I wonder if people still enjoy hearing that though, because of the implication of age.
Yeah, as long as those who are calling me jiejie are really younger than me, that's fine.
Yeah, that's what I mean.
Yeah, that's what I mean.
If it's somebody close to your age, you'd probably feel like.
Yeah.
So be careful when you use that one, I guess.
Is that that term exclusively women to women or?
No, no, no.
It doesn't really matter.
Doesn't matter.
That being said, we are not saying it's already the perfect day and age for women in China or around the world.
There's still a lot to do in the sense that.
From how we want to raise our girls to be become to, for example, in high positions, no matter it's government position or in businesses.
You still see not enough women taking the lead in being the bosses, being the CEO, CFO or C whatever kind of of the company.
So that happens.
Well, I think it needs the collective effort from both the society and women ourselves.
Yeah, and education from schools to parents, to the media, the way that we teach young women about what they can be.
I agree.
We should still be celebrating those things.
When I said before, I look forward to the day that we don't have to do that anymore.
That means we've gotten there.
Yeah.
You see those stories of success because there's representation.
Yes.
And everyone needs representation.
And you see those stories of success and then people, young women feel like I can do that too.
There's no limitations.
There's no limitations.
And also there's no set model to become.
You can still be beautiful.
Considerate.
You can still be sensitive in a good way.
You notice things.
At the same time, young women are also very much encouraged to be powerful, to be decisive and, to be honest, be anything that you want.
I would love it if anybody called me any of those things.
Yes, that's the point.
And that brings us to the end of today's Takeaway Chinese.
Thank you so much for spending the time with us.
And if you are interested in listening to more shows, you can search for Takeaway Chinese.
You can also find the script on our radio.cgtn.com website.
Don't forget to leave your questions, comments, and ratings.
Thanks so much.
See you next time.
