In hidden alley bars and salons and bookstores in Shanghai, women debate their place in a country where men make the laws.
Some wore wedding dresses to make public vows of commitment to themselves. Others gathered to watch films made by women about women. Book lovers flocked to women’s bookstores to read titles like “The Destroyed Woman” and “Living a Feminist Life.”
Women in Shanghai and some of China’s other largest cities are negotiating the fragile conditions of public expression at a politically precarious time. China’s ruling Communist Party has identified feminism as a threat to its authority. Women’s rights activists have been imprisoned. Concerns about harassment and violence against women are ignored or silenced entirely.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has diminished the role of women at work and in public office. There are no female members of Xi’s inner circle or the Politburo, the executive body charged with formulating policy. He has invoked more traditional roles for women, as caregivers and mothers, in planning a new “culture of motherhood” to address a shrinking population.
But women’s groups across China are quietly reclaiming their own identities. Many belong to a generation that grew up with more freedom than their mothers. Shanghai women, deeply shaken by a two-month Covid lockdown in 2022, are driven by the need to build community.
“I think everyone who lives in this city seems to have reached this stage where they want to explore more about the power of women,” said Du Wen, founder of Her, a bar that hosts discussion rooms.
Frustrated by the public’s increasingly narrow understanding of women, Nong He, a film and theater student, screened three documentaries about women made by Chinese female directors.
“I think we should have a larger space for women to create,” He said. “We hope to organize such an event so that people know what our lives are like, what other women’s lives are like, and with that understanding, we can connect and provide help to each other.”
At quietly publicized events, women challenge the misogynistic tropes of Chinese culture. “Why are lonely ghosts always women?” a woman asked recently, referring to Chinese literature’s depiction of homeless women after death. They share advice for beginners in feminism. Start with the story, said Tang Shuang, owner of Paper Moon, which sells books by female authors. “This is like the basement of the structure.”
There are few reliable statistics on gender violence and sexual harassment in China, but incidents of violence against women have occurred with increasing frequency, according to researchers and social workers. Stories of women physically mutilated or brutally murdered for trying to leave their husbands, or savagely beaten for resisting unwanted attention from men, have circulated widely online. The discovery of a woman chained inside a doorless hut in eastern Jiangsu province has become one of the most discussed topics online in years.
In each case, the reactions have been very divisive. Many people denounced the attackers and denounced sexism in society. Many others blamed the victims.
The way these discussions polarize society made Ms. Tang, a businesswoman and former deputy editor of Vogue China, nervous. Events in her own life also disturbed her. As her friends shared feelings of shame and worthlessness for not getting married, Ms. Tang sought a framework to express what she felt.
“Then I discovered that even I don’t have very clear thoughts about these things,” she said. “People are eager to talk, but they don’t know what they’re talking about.” Ms. Tang decided to open Paper Moon, a store for intellectually curious readers like her.
The bookstore is divided into an academic section that features feminist history and social studies, as well as literature and poetry. There is an area for biographies. “You need to have some real stories to encourage women,” Ms. Tang said.
Anxiety about attracting the wrong kind of attention is always present.
When Ms. Tang opened her store, she placed a sign on the door describing it as a feminist bookstore that welcomed all genders, as well as pets. “But my friend warned me that she should delete it because, you know, she could cause problems if she used the word feminism.”
Wang Xia, the owner of Xin Chao Bookstore, has chosen to stay away from the “F” word entirely. Instead, he described his bookstore as “feminine-themed.” When he opened it in 2020, the store was a sprawling space with nooks to foster private conversations and six study rooms named after famous authors like Simone de Beauvoir.
The Xin Chao Bookstore served more than 50,000 people through online events, workshops and conferences, Ms. Wang said. It had more than 20,000 books on art, literature and self-improvement: books about women and books for women. The store became so prominent that state media wrote about it and the Shanghai government posted the article on its website.
Still, Ms. Wang was careful to avoid making a political statement. “My ambition is not to develop feminism,” she said.
For Ms. Du, the founder of Her, empowering women is at the core of her motivation. The isolation of the pandemic prompted her to act: Shanghai ordered its residents to stay in their apartments under lock and key for two months, and her world was reduced to the walls of her apartment.
For years she dreamed of opening a place where she could elevate women’s voices, and now it seemed more urgent than ever. After lockdown, she opened Her, a place where women could make friends and debate the social expectations society had placed on them.
On International Women’s Day in March, Her held an event called Marry Me, where women made vows to themselves. The bar also housed a room where women played the roles of mothers and daughters. Many younger women described their reluctance to be treated the way their mothers were treated and said they didn’t know how to talk to them, Du said.
Authorities met with Ms. Du and told her that as long as the events in Her did not become too popular, there was a place for it in Shanghai, she said.
But in China there is always the possibility that officials will crack down. “They never tell you clearly what is prohibited,” Paper Moon’s Tang said.
Recently, Ms. Wang moved the Xin Chao Bookstore to Shanghai Book City, a famous store with large atriums and long columns of shelves. A four-volume collection of Mr. Xi’s writings is prominently displayed in multiple languages.
The City of the Book is huge. The Xin Chao Bookstore space is not, Ms. Wang said, with several shelves in and around a small room that could eventually hold only about 3,000 books.
“It’s a small city cell, a cultural cell,” Ms. Wang said.
Even so, it stands out in China.
“Not every city has a women’s bookstore,” she said. “There are many cities that do not have that cultural soil.”
Li you contributed to the research.