VIDEO LINK: China's "Kingdom of Women"
If you think the Na people's practice is not contemporary watch this National Geographic video of a similar group in China. The Mosuo peoples.Why do you think we resist thinking this is normal, contemporary or modern, and natural? Why do we always make it different and distant?
Here is another video of the Mosuo where they have no word for father:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoTrARDa8BU
As of 10/2009 this link is not working.
Visit
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/07/introduction_to.html#
or Read article in Slate magazine. China's "Kingdom of Women"Posted Monday, Nov. 13, 2006, at 1:03 PM ET
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4 comments:
Its interesting to see a community where women are respected and celebrated.But like alot of other socities they still have to work extremely hard to make ends meet while the men have time to play games and go to school.Economic trends plays a major role on societies and gender stratification, because now that the community is making more money the men want to leave and make their own. And now women want to recieve education. The chinese who once wanted to elimanate this comunity now wants to preserve it. So Interseting. Iwish i could understand what they were saying though.
The cultures in this small village within China is very different than how the 'normal' or 'modern' cultures are like elsewhere. We resist thinking this is normal because the culture is different than the one we grew up in. People want to leave this village as it was years ago to 'preserve' it or to serve as a tourist attraction for economic reasons. As it was said in the video, differences makes it special and makes more people want to visit this village.
However, as tourists visit, the village is becoming more and more 'modernized' and leaving behind their old ways.
When I read about "Life without Father" I was in complete shock. My only response was laughter.I began questioning my own culture; what makes my cultural ways the correct way to live?I spoke to my mother about what I had read and the only response I received from her was "Que loquera", meaning that's crazy talk.
I think it's an interesting culture and something new to me because I was born and grew up in China but never knew about the Na. In the part of China where i grew up, male is the dominant power in the culture. Man are considerated to be the head of household and get to make all major decisions. This is very different from what I read in the reading about the Na. In the Na culture, woman is the head of household and she is the one who makes all the decisions. Such great difference demonstrated that different cultures enforce different values on women.
Another thing that shocked me was that the man and the women never married, instead, they had this tradition called "walking marriage" (from Prof. Gaunt's lecture) where man visits woman in her house at night. Sounds romantic that there's only the two of them who's having a date at nighttime.
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