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‘She. Herself. Naked.': The Art of He Chengyao

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‘She. Herself. Naked.': The Art of He Chengyao

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"In China, public nudity is generally considered shameful and art critics and fellow artists have chastised Ms. He for stripping. “They say I’m trying to attract attention,” she said. Yet she argues it serves a deeper purpose. She removed her shirt at the Great Wall because, “Women aren’t supposed to behave like that,” she said with a grin."

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Wearing only underpants, He Chengyao faces the camera, the long acupuncture needles sticking out of her body making her look somewhat like a human porcupine. The performance art piece, now a video and a photograph, is titled "99 Needles."

In another work, a photograph titled "Opening the Great Wall," Ms. He (pronounced "her,") strides topless along China's Great Wall, her obvious femininity lending a twist to the popular Chinese saying that "You're not a real man until you visit the Great Wall."

Stunt nudity or something deeper?

"It's body politics," said the art critic Tong Yujie, who has written a book about radical women's art in China and says Ms. He's work, which explores nudity, mental illness and memory through performance art, video and photography, is valuable for its focus on a little examined topic in Asian art: mother-daughter relationships.

"People often give social or political interpretations to my work," Ms. He said in an interview in her home, a roomy Quonset hut in the Beijing suburb of Caochangdi. "And those things are the overall context." But mostly her work is intensely personal, she said. Her mother conceived her out of wedlock and was punished - there was also forced acupuncture to "cure" her - for violating social norms.

"I'm using my body to take on her pain, to express guilt. What I'm doing is mostly about emotion, about familial relationships. I feel this is the center of life," she said.

Her challenging work has been shown in China, though not often, she says. It has been more embraced elsewhere. She is part of a show at the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum in Bremen, Germany, through Feb. 2 in a show called, " Sie. Selbst. Nackt." ("She. Herself. Nude.") The collection of nude self-portraits by female artists also includes works by Marina Abramovic, Louise Bourgeois, Cecile Walton, Maria Lassnig and Amrita Sher-Gil.

Ms. He, 49, didn't start out as an artist. Born in Sichuan province in China's southwest, she taught math in an elementary school for three years before attending art college. She then taught art, but later left that job feeling that, as a young mother - she has a son who is now in his 20s - she couldn't combine the rigid hours with motherhood. Instead, she painted at home to earn money.

The story of Ms. He and her mother began in the early 1960s, shortly before the Cultural Revolution shook China. Her young parents, who worked in a pottery factory in Rongchang in present-day Chongqing municipality, conceived her while unmarried. "They were told by the factory, 'Have an abortion or be fired'," she said. They chose to keep her and were fired.

"My mother was just 19 when I was born," Ms. He said. It was 1964, the planned economy was in full swing and the offense spelled economic and social disaster. Two more children followed quickly.

In 1966, the Cultural Revolution began and Ms. He's father disappeared, jailed for being in the "wrong" political faction, Ms. He said.

"My mother didn't know where he was. She had no job, no money, no husband and three children." So began a descent into madness, said Ms. He. She would strip in public, shaming her children.

"Twice on the street I pretended she wasn't my mother. Once, later, she was rounded up and sent to another town," Ms. He said. "She was lost," she added, crying.

In an attempt at a cure, a door was taken down and her mother tied to it, screaming, as amateurs administered painful acupuncture. "I was about five," said Ms. He. "I watched. And there was nothing I could do to help."

In China, public nudity is generally considered shameful and art critics and fellow artists have chastised Ms. He for stripping. "They say I'm trying to attract attention," she said. Yet she argues it serves a deeper purpose. She removed her shirt at the Great Wall because, "Women aren't supposed to behave like that," she said with a grin.

For Alison Stone, a professor at Lancaster University in Britain, it's more than that. "It's as if she becomes her mother, deliberately re-enacts her mother's experiences, and pain, within herself," said Ms. Stone, who has written about women, mothers and art, in an email.

"He Chengyao's art works are nearly all connected to her mother," said Ma Lin, a professor at the Fine Art College of Shanghai University. "We see her shadow everywhere in them." Of "99 Needles," she said: "That work is an attempt to feel her mother's pain, but also an accusation toward society for treating her mother so poorly."

With her mother ill, Ms. He, her younger brother and sister were cared for by their maternal grandmother. Their mother lived with them too. Despite the difficulties, the family was close.

Sometimes there was physical violence between the two older women. "All my life I was told, don't talk about the craziness in the family, especially when you're 'discussing love'," she said, using a term to mean, courting. "It will stain you. People fear it will affect the next generation." To this day, she said, there is little help for the mentally ill in China.

"Today I wonder if other people think I'm mad for doing what I do. It's a question of how you judge things," Ms. He said.

In another performance art piece (with the exception of "Opening the Great Wall", which she said was spontaneous, Ms. He stages scheduled performances or exhibitions) called "Public Broadcast Exercises," she bound herself in red-and-white tape and performed the collective calisthenics known to every Chinese. Once mandatory, they are falling out of fashion but still take place at state schools and some workplaces. The work expresses physical and mental restrictions, she said. Sometimes the tapes loosened or snapped, "But the point was to be tied up," she said.

Today, she's focusing on memory and time, sometimes using needles, to puncture cards in meditative works that point to her growing interest in Buddhism.

"I feel that the works I do are for my grandmother, for my mother. Not for myself," she said. "I feel they are speaking through my body and I have to speak for them. They don't have the opportunity."

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'She. Herself. Naked.': The Art of He Chengyao

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Wearing only underpants, He Chengyao faces the camera, the long acupuncture needles sticking out of her body making her look somewhat like a human porcupine. The performance art piece, now a video and a photograph, is titled "99 Needles."

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"In August, several women shaved their heads in Beijing to protest against the growing trend in Chinese universities where women must score higher entry marks then men and face unofficial but commonly acknowledged gender inequality; in November, some women and men uploaded their own nude photos and appealed to cyber citizens to eliminate violence against women and promote the legislation of Anti-domestic Violence Law; in December, in Guangzhou and five other cities, young women walked down the streets in wedding gowns covered in blood stains as ‘Injured Brides’, advocating people to protest against domestic violence."

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The year 2012 was known in the media as 'The first year of China's Feminist Activism'. I was part of a jury in the (2012) Fifth China Sex and Gender Event. We chose the year's top ten activities, of which the tenth was "Feminists Are Active". We covered a great number of actions that year: in February, one of the most vocal feminists in China who goes by the nickname Maizijia initiated a campaign to ' occupy male bathrooms' in Guangzhou; in April, Churan Zheng, a female undergraduate student of Sun Yat-sen University, wrote a public letter to the CEOs of the global 500 enterprises calling for a solution to gender discrimination in recruitment; in August, several women shaved their heads in Beijing to protest against the growing trend in Chinese universities where women must score higher entry marks then men and face unofficial but commonly acknowledged gender inequality; in November, some women and men uploaded their own nude photos and appealed to cyber citizens to eliminate violence against women and promote the legislation of Anti-domestic Violence Law; in December, in Guangzhou and five other cities, young women walked down the streets in wedding gowns covered in blood stains as 'Injured Brides', advocating people to protest against domestic violence.

I drafted the following announcement, which was then discussed and revised by the board of juries:

Feminists do not have enough channels to express their demands and opinions under the existing social system, so the younger generation of feminists has launched performance art activities in pubic spaces and on social media in order to advocate for women's rights and to challenge China's patriarchal culture. They have raised public concern regarding women's rights, voicing concerns that have been repressed and despised, and challenging traditional gender roles through their performances. By shaving their heads, showing their naked bodies, and taking part in performances that shed light on the female body and women's rights, they have subverted the traditional gender norms in China.

Although I work in an academic institute, I am not just an observer and researcher, I am also an activist. For example, I took part in the performance art of shaved heads in August 2012 with no hesitation. However I felt a bit shy to go to a hairdresser, so I ordered barber tools online and asked a colleague to shave my head for me at home. A photograph of my bald head was printed in postcards made by Chinese feminist activists. To this day, many of my friends still remember the time that I shaved my head, and challenge me saying that that act seemed to have very little connection to do with what we [feminists] were advocating for. While I have some regrets about this action, there remains a positive part - that also answers my friends' challenge: it was a performative art that broke with gender stereotypes.

Yaya Chen, the author of this article, in 2012. The text reads 'Gender equality'

For the 'Injured Brides' sub-performance in Shanghai in December 2012, I was one of the main planners. I recommended that the event take place to first at the Women's Federation of Shanghai, and then at the Bund. This choice was a symbolic one: the former is an official organisation to protect women's rights and the latter is a major landmark of Shanghai[1], both were meaningful for the project. When we arrived at the Bund, the area was large and exposed so even though the square was crowded (providing for a large 'audience'), it was terribly cold and windy. After a short while, security guards walked up to us and told us to put down our signs. Even though they didn't arrest us or force us to leave, for our own safety we soon left.

As a result of a photograph of me and others taken during the performance was posted online, I got a lot of pressure from people at work. I received several phone calls from an official who told me to delete this image because they had been contacted by the Women's Federation of Shanghai[2]; the organisation possibly felt embarrassed by this, which is not the reaction I had expected. I thought they would have been pleased, since the movement was aligned with their concern for women's rights - wouldn't this be a positive thing? For this reason, I contacted the Women's Federation of Shanghai via their official Sina Weibo[3] account. In the end, I had to delete these pictures from my own online account. Since all media outlets are policed to the same political standard, our feminist performance never made it to the printed press, and it looked as if we had only been doing this for our own entertainment.
A performance of 'Injured Brides' against domestic violence, Yaya Chen (with short hair) and her feminist activism friend at the Bund, Shanghai, December 2012. The text reads: right side is 'Love isn't the beginning of violence' (right), and 'Violence is around you and me, are you still keeping silent about it?' (rights)
It is no surprise that women's rights and related activities are monopolised by the official organisation, the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF). Acting under the government of the People's Republic of China, the ACWF and it's branches have not only taken over some of the work on women's rights, but on a different level it has also become a tool that exerts power on women and their organisation through the normal operation of state power. While the ACWF theoretically seeks a good balance between the responsibilities of feminist activism and representation of the state's position, they tend to incline towards the latter duty, because they are civil servants whose political stance and funding come from the government.
The famous political cartoonist Bajincao made this poster to support 'Free the Five' International Movement.
With the central government's backing, the ACWF considers that it has a stronghold on feminist activism; hence it does not welcome the performances of grassroots feminist activists. These not only bring no benefit to the ACWF, but on the contrary they even create some troubles for them. However, with the development of information technology and social organisation, the main force of the feminist movement seems to have returned to the people, and ACWF has been gradually forgotten. Somehow, grassroots feminists have developed a stronger social influence than the ACWF. In March 2015, five feminists were detained for 36 days for trying to advocate against harassment on International Women's Day. They all came from non-governmental organisations, including Tingting Li (Maizijia) and Churan Zheng whom I mentioned above, and Man Wang, Tingting Wei and Rongrong Wu. They are important planners and participants in a lot of China's feminist activist movements.

In 2006, I built a website with friends for publishing feminist news. We then thought about launching some other forms of activities. One of my partners had researched and proposed a kind of radical action in public bathrooms that was very similar to the feminist activists' street performance 'occupy male's bathrooms' but we never got a chance to carry it out. After 2012, I gradually reduced my involvement in feminist activist actions, because for a person like me who doesn't like the:e ordinary social activities taking part in radical performances in the streets was too challenging.

In 2006, a young girl who was studying overseas interviewed me about women's rights at a conference in Beijing. She asked me where I thought the 'hope of Chinese feminism' was. I told her that it was in the non-governmental groups, like our grassroots website. At that time, I had a negative attitude towards the ACWF, I thought they were hopeless and had no future. But now, the NGOs are in a similar situation. For example, for financial and personal reasons, our website can only provide basic functions like being a platform for women's rights news and information, and a forum for feminists. There is nothing more that we that can do.

Even though I am less and less involved in these activities, I still follow the news about feminist activism in China. They are always doing things; not only have they focused on performances and demonstrationsbut they have additionally launched a national speaking tour, organised workshops on different topics, recruited and trained new members. Some of their activities are based on previously effective actions for example academic papers or conferences, and some of them are new 'battlefield' actions, such as working against (female child) sex abuse, supporting the strike of female cleaners, advocating anti-harassment laws on university campuses, and so on. The ranks of activists are growing larger: almost every city has prominent feminist figures who take part in activism, even in small and medium cities.

Wei Wei, the author of "Street, Behaviour, Art: Advocating Gender Rights and the Innovation of a Social Movement Repertoire"[4], interviewed as many participants as he could for this paper. He described a common character of these feminist performances that cannot be ignored: walking in the streets conveying gender equality is a soft but creative way to spread the message. The impact of street art has been positive. For example, after the performance of 'Occupying Men's Toilets', the government of Guangzhou introduced a new set of policies: 'Implementing Opinions on Improving the Proportion of Female Public Toilets'[5]. Shortly after that, Shenzhen, Beijing and other cities followed suit. Some other advocacy activities have also seen a political response. For example, in 2013, the Provisions of Admission of Entrance Examination of Institutions of Higher Education gave clearer guidance and prohibition against gender discrimination.

The success of these activities is also due to the creativity of the performances. It is also important that the selected actions do not enter into conflict with national policies, as this ensures that they are acceptable to the government. Finally, people must be able to see the impact of these activities in the short term. The art of advocacy is broad: it not only works through language, by appealing to public opinions through the media or by pressuring the government to make reforms, it also relies on actions., such as applying for information disclosure, running petitions and lobbying for women's rights. The repetition of these actions means that the activists have been taken seriously.
The text reads, "Against gender violence" (red) and "Opposition to violence is being subjected to violence" (black).
Wei Wei also said that street performance, in comparison to direct confrontation, has its own advantage: it requires less social and economic capital, and reduces legal and political risks. But after the 'five feminists' incident, his positive attitude can be questiones, as their performance didn't get a green light from the government. It has been a very heavy blow for feminist activism, and the relevant NGOs have now been unable to continue their work, their staff has had to find another way out.

Nonetheless, the 'five feminists' incident has not marked an end, but a new start for protest. After this year's International Women's Day, my friends and I wore the same wedding gowns we wore in 2012 for another performance in the honour of the five feminists called 'Injured Brides are Imprisoned'. The purpose was to appeal for an end of violence against feminists. The photos of this new performance were banned online, but they were not deleted. To accompany the images, we wrote the following: "They are injured brides, working against gender-based violence and appealing for gender equality. Now they are imprisoned, enduring violence for every woman who wants to be free from violence, losing freedom for all women to gain freedom. It is time to do something for them: release the five feminists, stop the violence against feminists.
Notes
Now, the new generation of Feminist Activism has lost its voice in cyberspace, their groups have been forcibly disbanded, and members have been forced to leave to try and find other jobs, but this is not the end of the whole story. The kindling of feminism and (performance) actions is strong and tough, just waiting for the next wave.

Weeds will be more vigorous during spring, having survived the winter, and that spring is coming soon. The grass cannot be burned out by a prairie fire but grows again with the spring breeze. This is the wish for Chinese Feminist activism.

[1] The Bund has been the most emblematic area of Shanghai for centuries. It refers to the waterfront area which hosts many historical buildings, formerly governmental and since the 1970s increasingly financial. Between 2008 and 2010, the Bund was completely reconfigured and updated to best accommodate tourism.

[2] The Women's Federation of Shanghai is a branch of the All-China Women's Federation, which is the official leader of the women's movement in China. Their website can be found here http://www.womenofchina.cn/about.htm

[3] China's most popular online social media

[4] Wei Wei (2014) "Street, Behavior, Art: Advocating Gender Rights and the Innovation of a Social Movement Repertoire", Chinese Journal of Sociology, Volume 34 (2), 94-117

[5] In the past few years, a major topic in feminist activism across China has been the increase of female public toilets. Proposals for official reforms were presented throughout the country by political representatives in the National People's Congress and in the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. They argue that an equal proportion of male and female public toilets does not seem to match the actual needs, since women effectively wait in line for a much longer time.

Further Reading on E-International Relations

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The year 2012 was known in the media as 'The first year of China's Feminist Activism'. I was part of a jury in the (2012) Fifth China Sex and Gender Event. We chose the year's top ten activities, of which the tenth was "Feminists Are Active".

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Luo Yang 's intimate imagery conveys an undeniable sense of softness, but beneath the fragile veneer lies a resolute layer of strength. Her photographs are primarily an exploration of individual identity, which the Beijing-based artist captures with disarming honesty and a vulnerability that never fails to reveal genuine boldness. "I'm from a very small town in northern China, where most people don't think of being an artist as a real occupation," Yang tells AnOther. "Art, and especially photography, has always been my way of knowing the world. I started using a camera to take pictures in university because I felt lonely and confused about the new life I was about to start, the big, strange world I was going to face."

First a creative armour, the camera soon became second nature to Yang, whose work today spans over a decade and has been exhibited worldwide, from Hong Kong to Berlin.

Currently showing at Bangkok's Woofpack and RDX Offsite, a ten-year retrospective co-curated by Chomwan Weeraworawit is revisiting the career of the image-maker described by Ai Weiwei as a "rising star of Chinese photography". Presented by Moonduckling Films, the exhibition is titled GIRLS - a name evocative of Yang's most recurring and distinctive photographic theme, femininity.

The collection of images includes portraits of Chinese women Yang has met in her private life, in a raw visual exploration of contemporary Chinese female identity. "Women are both soft and strong, a combination of vulnerability and toughness," the photographer explains. "Their complexity has always inspired me, and through photography I always tried to understand them - today, I feel I've worked out most of the problems and confusions as a teenage girl which drove me to start this series. I've entered a different stage of life, so the retrospective is aiming to close one chapter on this eternal journey to self-discovery."

Underlying tensions and ambivalent emotions are at the heart of Yang's images, denying the viewer the possibility of a conclusive reading. In her work, highly staged portraits and carefully constructed poses alternate with a raw, blurred snapshot aesthetic; Yang works with film cameras only, deliberately slowing down the creative process and focusing on capturing a unique moment rather than refining an image in post-production.

Her frames don't shy away from reflecting on the ever-shifting mentalities surrounding the topics of feminism and identity in modern China. Most of all, however, her work is a testament to her subjects' individuality. "I don't constantly work with politics in the back of my mind," Yang concludes. "I tend to focus more on people, on each individual's life and all the complexities playing into it - I hope my work touches people in a human way first and foremost."
GIRLS by Luo Yang, presented by Moonduckling and produced by Annette Fausboll, Jean Alexandre Luciani and Julien Favre, is at Woofpack, Bangkok and RDX Offsite, Bangkok.

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The Photographer Capturing What it's Like Being a Woman in China

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Luo Yang 's intimate imagery conveys an undeniable sense of softness, but beneath the fragile veneer lies a resolute layer of strength. Her photographs are primarily an exploration of individual identity, which the Beijing-based artist captures with disarming honesty and a vulnerability that never fails to reveal genuine boldness.

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This topic is so important to me because I believe in making our own bodies legible to our desires and the multitude of identities we inhabit. As a Chinese woman, the fact that I enjoy being a woman and that I claim my body and my mind as one is an act of protest. Girls in China are called “mouths to feed.” This meant that our bodies were considered a burden in themselves, an empty vehicle to be fed, maintained, and eventually, bargained off. Our ancestor’s bodies were literally sites of transaction. We were expected to be kept alive, but not to take up any space. It’s one thing to have a space carved out for your body and another thing to freely traverse a space that allows your body to move and grow. Some of the most powerful and transgressive acts of protest are seemingly simple, but take great courage and can provoke profound change. For me, this meant carving my own path and believing in the value of my own thoughts and my work. It also meant protesting in small ways within the context of our extended family-- I am “infamous” in our family for speaking up against my uncle, who is a perpetrator of domestic violence. I have tried to engage in a meaningful conversation with him many times, but every time he rejects the offer and backs away. Although he lives right next door to us, I almost never set foot in his house. Creating and adhering to this physical boundary is my act of protest against my uncle's behavior. In the Chinese context, protesting within the family not only demarcates and “others'' yourself within the eyes of outsiders but also within the eyes of insiders. I have been called "difficult," "stubborn," "arrogant," “unfilial" and "ruthless" for this. I recently learned that historically, Chinese women had to undergo a series of abusive and invasive tests to prove that they were not prostitutes when they immigrated to the US, and I was both shocked and heartbroken to find out how, again (and in a trans-national setting), Chinese women’s bodies were appropriated into a passive site of transaction, governance, and interrogation. Sometimes redefining our relationship to our bodies, choosing to lay claim to our own stories, and telling the "savage and dangerous" truth are all small but radical acts of protest. However, I also recognize the privilege in my ability to set boundaries with some members of my family and to ultimately have control over my body-- my parents understand me enough to protect and make my boundaries visible, even if it also comes at a cost for them.

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Tired of housework and an unhappy marriage, a 56-year-old woman has been on a six-month jaunt across China that has challenged deep-rooted gender norms.

"Why do I want to take a road trip?" asked Su Min, a 56-year-old retiree from Henan Province in central China. "Life at home is truly too upsetting."

She spends each night alone, curled up in a four-and-a-half by eight-foot rooftop tent, balanced on stilts above her car. She often eats her meals in parking lots. She has seen her daughter and grandchildren only once in the past six months, and her husband not at all.

Su Min, a 56-year-old retiree from Henan Province in central China, has never been happier.

"I've been a wife, a mother and a grandmother," Ms. Su said. "I came out this time to find myself."

After fulfilling her family's expectations of dutiful Chinese womanhood, Ms. Su is embracing a new identity: fearless road-tripper and internet sensation. For six months, she has been on a solo drive across China, documenting her journey for more than 1.35 million followers across several social media platforms.

Her main appeal is not the scenic vistas she captures, though those are plentiful. It is the intimate revelations she mixes in with them, about her abusive marriage, dissatisfaction with domestic life and newfound freedom. Her blunt but vulnerable demeanor has made Ms. Su - a former factory worker with a high school education - an accidental feminist icon of a sort rarely seen in China.

Older women send her messages about how painfully familiar her story feels, and greet her at each destination bearing fruit and home-cooked meals. For younger women, she is a font of advice about marriage and child-rearing. "I wish my mother could be like Auntie Su and live for herself, instead of being trapped and locked in by life," read a comment on one of her videos.

Her unexpected popularity speaks to the collision of two major forces in Chinese society: the rapid spread of the internet, and a flourishing awareness of gender equality in a country where traditional gender roles are still deeply rooted, especially among older generations.

"Before, I thought I was the only person in the world who wasn't happy," Ms. Su said in an interview from inside her beige tent. She was leaving tropical Hainan, China's southernmost province, headed for Guilin, a city famed for its lush hills, about 500 miles away.

Only after sharing her videos online, she said, "did I realize there were so many people like me."

Before last fall, Ms. Su had rarely traveled. But she had long been enamored with the idea of driving. Growing up in Tibet, she sometimes missed the school bus home and had to walk 12 miles through the mountains, she said. Each time a truck passed by, she imagined sitting behind the wheel, safe and comfortable. But cars were rare, and having one seemed impossible.

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Ms. Su spends each night alone, curled up in a four-and-a-half by eight-foot rooftop tent, balanced like a treehouse on stilts above her car.

At 18, she moved to Henan and worked in a fertilizer factory. Five years later, she married her husband. They had met only a few times - not uncommon at the time - but she thought marriage might be a way out of the endless chores she shouldered at home.

Instead, she said, she found herself laden with even more housework, as well as verbal and physical abuse. Her husband would disappear for long stretches and then hit her if she asked where he had been, she said; once, he beat her with a broom.

Still, Ms. Su said, she never considered leaving, worried about a social stigma that is still pervasive in much of China.

She resigned herself to her life at home. Her daughter gave birth to twins in 2017, and Ms. Su was in charge of watching them - a task that she was happy to do, but that kept her tied to her home. Though age had cooled her husband's temper, they barely spoke. When they did, they argued.

She sought solace in novels about time-travel and romantic Korean soap operas but still felt deeply lonely. During especially heated arguments with her husband, she would faint, she said. A doctor eventually told her she had depression.

Then, in late 2019, she came across a video online of someone introducing their camping gear while on a solo road trip. She remembered her childhood dream of driving - the freedom and comfort it had represented.

Over the following months, she devoured every video she could find about road trips. She took copious notes: which apps they used to find campsites, which tricks they had for saving money. (Showers at public bathhouses, she learned, could be bought in bulk).

Soon, she made up her mind: Once her grandsons entered preschool, she would embark on a trip of her own. She had bought a small white Volkswagen hatchback several years earlier, with her savings and a monthly pension of around $300.

Her family was resistant. Ms. Su reassured her daughter that she would be safe. She ignored her husband, who she said mocked her.

On Sep. 24, she fixed her tent to the top of the car, packed a mini-fridge and rice cooker, and set off from her home in the city of Zhengzhou.

She posted video updates as she drove, and in October, one of them went viral on Douyin, the Chinese TikTok. In it, she described how oppressed she had felt by housework and her husband.

"Why do I want to take a road trip?" she sighed. "Life at home is truly too upsetting."

Millions watched the video, sharing it with hashtags like "runaway wife."

Ms. Su continued across the country, visiting historical Xi'an, mountainous Sichuan and the old town of Lijiang - covering more than 8,500 miles so far. She saved on highway tolls by taking country routes. At night, she unfolded her tent atop her car like an accordion, feeling safer up high. Before setting out again each morning, she draped her wet towel on a clothesline strung across the back seat.

In her videos, she marveled at her newfound freedom. She could drive as fast as she wanted, brake as hard as she liked. At each stop, she made new friends, she said. Wrapping dumplings on camera in a Hainan parking lot in February, she laughed when tourists passing by asked who was traveling with her.

"I love eating hot peppers, but my family doesn't like them, so I had to make myself not eat peppers," she said in an interview. "Now after coming out, I can eat peppers every day."

She has sometimes encountered hostility. Once, she said, a man asked how she could air her family's private affairs and said he would beat her if they ever met in person.

She replied, "Good thing I haven't met you."

Ms. Su's daughter, Du Xiaoyang, who visited her in Hainan last month, said her mother was a new person.

"Anything she wants to do, she just does, whereas before she seemed afraid of everything," Ms. Du said.

In March, Net-a-Porter, the luxury shopping website, even featured Ms. Su in an advertisement for International Women's Day.

In March 2021, Net-a-Porter, the luxury shopping website, featured Ms. Su in an advertisement for International Women's Day. Credit... Net-a-Porter

Still, Ms. Su blushes when asked about her new fame. She also says she is not yet qualified to claim the mantle of feminist. "It took me so many years to realize that I had to live for myself."

She paused: "It's something I'm waking up to, not something that I just am."

There are limits to what she is willing to change. Though she is determined to move out if her husband continues to treat her badly, she says she doesn't want a divorce, knowing that her daughter would feel obliged to care for him if she left.

But she tries not to dwell upon that eventual homecoming. First, she plans to cover all of China. That could take a few years.

"Now that I've finally come out, now that I want to leave behind that life, I need time to let it melt away," she said. "There are many things that, as time passes, may have an outcome you never imagined."

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A Chinese 'Auntie' Went on a Solo Road Trip. Now, She's a Feminist Icon.

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Tired of housework and an unhappy marriage, a 56-year-old woman has been on a six-month jaunt across China that has challenged deep-rooted gender norms. She spends each night alone, curled up in a four-and-a-half by eight-foot rooftop tent, balanced on stilts above her car. She often eats her meals in parking lots.

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Our project addresses two ways in which “embodied protest” functions in contemporary contexts: in China, how embodied protest serves as a mechanism for bypassing state censorship and “rewriting” the female bodily history, and in the US, how the framework of embodied protest can counteract a commercialized, profitable and performative co-optation of social movements.

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Our project synthesizes both culture and gender in order to focus on how the embodiment of protest challenges the social construction of gender. By re-positioning the “body” back into the act of protest, we assume the significance of the female body in both understanding and disrupting asymmetrical gendered socio-political hierarchies. We acknowledge that discourse and social institutions are produced and reproduced through body practices and that the female body itself contains Stuart Hall’s idea of culture as an arena of “consent and resistance.” Historically, women’s bodies have been used as a site of legislation, interrogation, and governance. However, simultaneously, women’s bodies possess an intrinsic potential to resist domination and circumvent or intervene in the discourse of power-brokers. This is mostly done through everyday acts of protest (acts of civil disobedience), in which women’s bodies are a constant and fluid site of negotiation, moving through the realms of both consent to and resistance against normative codes of behavior. By emphasizing the centrality and specificity of the female body as a site of protest, we are also attempting to depart from the Eurocentric notion of the mind/body dualism. It is important to move away from a theoretical and intellectualized concept of protest into one that highlights women’s bodies as carriers of real trauma and relics of violence but also creative expressions of self-empowerment.

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“The ungendered body does not exist, just as the unclassed body does not exist.” Maya Mikdashi, “How to Study Gender in the Middle East”

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“The ungendered body does not exist, just as the unclassed body does not exist.” Maya Mikdashi, “How to Study Gender in the Middle East”

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like fr why yall so pressed fo 🤣😭#hijabi #harampolice #muslim #desi #pakistani #arab #fyp #foryoupage

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@hoejabi_
like fr why yall so pressed fo 🤣😭#hijabi #harampolice #muslim #desi #pakistani #arab #fyp #foryoupage
♬ WITHOUT YOU - The Kid LAROI

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Including my own 😊 #fyp #foryou #brownfamily #muslim #indiantiktok #browngirl #muslimgirlproblems #relatable #desi #browngirlproblems

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@madina.ash
Including my own 😊 #fyp #foryou #brownfamily #muslim #indiantiktok #browngirl #muslimgirlproblems #relatable #desi #browngirlproblems
♬ original sound - hailey jackson

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                                                                       Questions? 

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                                                                       Questions? 

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With a better understanding of “everyday” protest, think about ways you practice everyday protest in your life (whether it’s against society, culture, institutions, etc.).

What are some ways you work to counter stereotypes and break down boundaries between “us” and “them” in your own life?

What are some ways you believe one’s body can symbolize something greater than what it is perceived to be?

What are your thoughts on the concept of individuals across different cultures and regions being interconnected through trauma?

Do you believe there needs to be a shift in the way society talks about women’s bodies?

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Many women took an alternative approach and organized a topless protest against the mandatory hijab law. The action performed by members of the Iranian Communist Party and the Organization Against Violence on Women in Iran took place in the center of the Swedish capital, Stockholm in dedication to International Women’s Day.

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The “us” and “them” narrative is embedded in society whether it's those in power against civilians, men against women, or the Western world against the Eastern world. I’m currently writing a paper for another class where I discuss the “othering” of individuals in Papua New Guinea for the benefit of American companies who hope to profit off stereotypes. These examples make me think about where we are in terms of breaking down these barriers. Are we even close? Is it getting worse? The truth is, I don’t believe the “us” and “them” narrative is going anywhere. However, as the child of immigrants, a first-generation college student, and an individual stuck between two identities, the “us” and “them” narrative is getting old. Countering stereotypes is a daily battle that is made increasingly difficult because I identify as the “us” in some situations the “them” in others. When my brown dad consistently gets “random” extra security checks at airports, I am part of the “them.” When I am told that I am “white-washed Indian,” I am part of the “us.” When I am told I smell like curry by zoom bombers in my high school government class when I speak up against them, I am part of the “them.” These tribulations are devastatingly a reality in today’s society. The question is how do we break down these boundaries and honestly, I do not have a concrete answer for the world. What I do know is that I have come to love the curls on my head and the melanin in my skin and I believe this form of self-love is protest. Packing “smelly” Indian food for school lunch is a form of protest. Dressing in crop tops and shorts is a form of protest. Eating meat is a form of protest. In my life, I break down boundaries by engaging in everyday protest and being unapologetically myself while advocating for others to do the same.

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Connection to our own experiences/breaking down boundaries between "us" and "them"

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Connection to our own experiences/breaking down boundaries between "us" and "them"

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Following Azadeh Moaveni discussion, a significant implication of women and embodied protest is punishment. Specifically, rape and virginity tests as a form of punishment. Marwan Kraidy expands on these experiences in "The Naked Blogger of Cairo" as she describes the acts of performing virginity tests and rape as legal methods of suppressing and humiliating women in hopes that it would stop them from protesting. States felt a need to inscribe their power onto the bodies it governs. One of the women in the book described how she wanted nothing more than death in the moment of getting a virginity test. It then makes sense why sexual defiance emerged alongside political protest in Egypt. The naked blogger was using the vessel that was subjugated to assault as a means of regaining her existence and freedom. Her body became a symbol of resistance that was condemned by many but widely spoken about and in turn, introduced this concept of using one's body as defiance to the world: embodied protest

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"Everyday" protest combines the acts symbolic of routine practice with those of activism.

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Since the Islamic revolution of 1979, women in Iran have been required to wear a headscarf in public. Many women have come together to fight against this law by taking the hijab off and waving it as a form of protest. One woman held a sign saying: “I love my hijab but I’m against compulsory hijab.”

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This photo is of a Macedonian protestor who was pressed up against riot police outside the Macedonian government building who applied her lipstick, staring straight into the reflective plastic shield in front of her. 

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This photo is of a Macedonian protestor who was pressed up against riot police outside the Macedonian government building who applied her lipstick, staring straight into the reflective plastic shield in front of her. 

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She shows that women not only have a place in political protests but that they can express themselves with class and strength.

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Embodied protest enables women to participate in “everyday protest.” Their bodies are the source of activism. Everyday protest introduces routine acts to the realm of activism and allows women to resist in small, powerful ways. As Azadeh Moaveni outlines in her TED talk, “Iran from a different perspective,” women challenge Iran’s dress codes by wearing leggings or lipstick.  The concept of “embodied protest” in itself implies a subjectivity, so by choosing this topic, we are inherently pushing back against the monolithic idea of protest, and changing the vocabularies around women’s bodies as a site to be colonized, governed and weaponized into a means for self-expression, subversiveness and self-empowerment. This topic also allows us to adopt a framework that recognizes the intersectionality of gender-based and race-based violence.

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Embodied protest is a type of activism in which the body is not just a mediator for protest, but IS the protest. The concept of embodied protest recognizes that bodies hold social meanings within wider political contexts.

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Throughout this semester, we spent a lot of time discussing stereotypes, systems of oppression, and ways to counter both of these phenomenons. This project aims to discuss women participating in embodied protest as well as “everyday” protest and analyze how their actions work to counter these stereotypes and systems of oppression. We will also discuss the implications of this type of protest.

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                                                       Women and Embodied Protest                                                        

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                                                       Women and Embodied Protest                                                        