My 19-year-old daughter and I looked at Professor Wu Qing wide-eyed, expecting the rest of her sentence with anticipation. The 83-year-old professor silently waited for our reaction. Then with a sparkle of self-satisfaction in her eye, she repeated “I am a verb! It has to work. I am not a noun or an adjective. I’m a verb. If you don’t take action, nothing is going to change.”

She then declared her approval of my daughter’s system for making sure the cleaning of the shared kitchen in her new dorm at university was gender equal and fair to all. My daughter had put in place a rolling cleaning schedule for all seven users of the kitchen, irrespective of whether they like their kitchen counter clean or dirty.

Wu Qing is an extraordinary personality who has fought all her life for women’s rights and gender empowerment in China. She is also the daughter of Bing Xin, one of the most prolific Chinese writers of the 20th century, and of sociologist Wu Wen Zao.

Wu Qing, in her lifetime, has served as a Beijing People’s Congress legislator (from 1984 to 2011), but she’s not your typical bureaucratic official. An award-winning professor of English, she has also built a reputation as a fearless advocate for women’s rights, human rights, and the rule of law, playing a pioneering role building Chinese women’s entrepreneurship and political participation at the grassroots level. Wu Qing has received numerous awards in recognition of her career in public service, including most notably the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award.

So what made Wu Qing such a brave person? She was a privileged child, as both her parents were highly educated. But not all educated intellectuals are necessarily luminaries. It seems that Wu Qing’s mother played a gigantic role in educating her daughter to truly empower her, regardless of her gender. Wu Qing’s mother, Bing Xin was also an exception of her times. One would be tempted to think that in early twentieth century China, where feudal family systems were strongly in place and where opportunities in women’s lives were very limited, Bing Xin’s parents would have fallen into the Confucian gender trap. There was foot-binding, widow chastity, arranged marriages, concubinage, and no education for women; that list is long. But Bing Xin’s father, a high ranking naval officer who traveled the world, had educated his daughter differently. He did not bind his daughter’s feet—still a common practice then. “He treated her like a son, dressing her in boy’s clothes and encouraging her love of nature. He taught his daughter such skills as horseback riding and shooting, and introduced her as ‘both my son and my daughter’ during banquets and parties;” Wu Qing recounts excitedly as if she were there.

Bing Xin started writing short stories for children when she was in high school. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1926 and became a passionate humanist. She was part of the intelligentsia who wanted to introduce and promote modern ideas and write in the language of everyday life. In that new language, Bing Xin articulated an appeal for humanism and a deeply personal love for her fellow woman and man. Her philosophy of love was unwavering, even though it would later be criticized and rejected by more radical peers as “feminine, elitist, and naive.”

It seems the answer to what made Wu Qing and even her mother Bing Xin’s relentless bravery and passion for all of humanity, not just feminine humanity, is parenting. So what were her educational concepts?

As two generations of women we were both curious to hear what Wu Qing would say were barriers, injustices, or gender biases she had to experience and overcome growing up. To our enormous surprise, she could not think of one occasion! Not one where she felt limited or something was impossible because she was a girl?

“Oh yes…” she remembers that one occasion when she noticed she was different from boys. “It’s when I noticed I couldn’t pee as far as them when we competed.” She went on almost screaming in mirth, “But so what!? I never felt inferior! I could climb a tree faster than them, and I could run faster than them!”

On education, Wu Qing, who gives classes to empower high school dropout girls from the countryside, says it is urgent that parents learn how to be parents and prepare their children for the future, as they have to be responsible for training global citizens. She is quite worried about the current state of education, and that schools only teach to perform and learn hard knowledge, but teach very little about social responsibility.

“We have to train not just ‘I’ but ‘we’ and ‘they’.” She recounts her first oral contract with her mother as being the right to keep a dog, but to take care of it at age 3. “My mother kept all her promises, so I kept mine.” This taught Wu Qing responsibility. “If children have learned responsibility while growing up, they will have a future; if they can keep a promise and be responsible for that promise, they will have a future and a career,” adds Professor Wu.

Professor Wu Qing started the first class on feminism at Beijing Foreign Language University. She encouraged her male students to attend because she said we need to educate men in gender awareness as well, so that they too are aware of what women face, especially in the countryside. She suddenly stopped and asked my daughter:

“So do you think it’s fair that we women always have to queue up at public toilets?”

“No! It’s not,” my daughter answered.

The 83-year-old continued the conversation with the 19-year-old. “Well, do you know why that is?”

“No.”

“The facts are simple. Since women have menstruation, it takes them two more minutes in the toilet than men. Also, they are responsible for taking with them the babies and the children. Toilets are unfair to women all over the world, because male architects divide the toilet space in half when they design the buildings. I advise you to make a simple record of how many boys to girls there are on your campus, and according to the fact that women need more time in the bathroom, you can do the math as to exactly how many more female bathrooms you all need! We did this calculation on our Beiwai campus. Since the ratio used to be five boys to two girls and now is five girls to two boys, we had the school change the toilets to match the proper gender balance. You do the math! And please don’t forget that no rights are ever given or granted. You have to fight for them! And remember that I am a verb and you and all the future generations of girls should be a verb too!”

Here are Professor Wu Qing’s Five Rules on Raising Responsible and Gender Aware Children:

1. In order to be a whole person, you have to know about your rights as well as your responsibilities and the rights of others as well, not just your own rights.
2. Financial independence. Learn critical thinking. You have to learn to make your own decisions.
3. Respect the environment.
4. Formal and informal education. Education is about body and soul. If you want to create global citizens you need to teach your children love, the importance of honesty, integrity, sharing, and cooperation and respect for each other.
5. To fight against violence. All kinds of violence, including domestic, school bullying, you name it.

Photos: Courtesy of Andy Friend
This article appeared on p44-45 of beijingkids May 2018 issue.

Omi is 14 years old and is one hundred percent vegetarian. Despite his meatless diet, he measures 1.84 meters, his shoe size is 45, and he plays all sports that involve chasing a ball at least six times a week. After all these years, we finally have living proof that being raised vegetarian works. It’s true. It’s not just a theory. You can be a vegetarian kid and also be healthy, tall, and physically fit.

For those 32 years since I’ve stopped eating meat, and the 14 years that Omi hasn’t eaten meat, it has been the main topic of conversation at almost every big Chinese family reunion meal, of which we have about ten annually.
“But why doesn’t he eat meat?” I’m asked and made to feel guilty, and then the focus turns on Omi. “You’ll never grow! You can’t play sports if you don’t eat meat.” Or as our Aunt Wang has asked tirelessly for the past 14 years: “Still not eating meat yet?”

Now that Omi has grown so tall, all I have to do is point to his size… I don’t even need to explain for the millionth time. It’s painful, trust me, when a meat dish arrives on the table, and the whole topic starts over again. Beijing people’s favorite pastime is to talk food and politics.

Unlike his mom who grew up most of her childhood as a third culture child, including in Beijing, Omi is a triple culture native child. He’s a mix of French, Indian, and Beijing cultures.

Omi has been vegetarian since his conception. His Beijing-raised, meat-loving, Buddhist dad and I agreed early on that since I only eat fish on occasion, and I don’t buy, touch or prepare meat, even for others, Omi and his older sister would grow up meatless until they consciously decided otherwise.

When you leave it up to a child, the pressure is high on all sides, and the peer pressure at school can be particularly strong. In fact, my now 18-year-old daughter was talked into eating meat when she was in the third grade. There were also the pressures of wanting to fit in, being shy, our Chinese family, and finally lack of support from her community.

I didn’t pay enough attention. I was too polite. I had written to the school to explain, as I have every year during both kids’ schooling for the last 14 years, that she was vegetarian, though it was not taken seriously.

So I was extra careful with my second child. I started writing more and more impassioned letters to his school. I visited the cafeteria and met the chefs. I was once told that if my son were Muslim, he could benefit from a special Halal meal alternative. The following year, my Moroccan chef friend who was managing the cafeteria took it upon himself to make sure my son was fed some type of non-meat protein. I still had to make sure Omi would not forget to go to the back kitchen and ask for his egg every day.

But over the years, I almost gave up hope because the official responses were always dismissive. My favorite one, was “but our food is very vegetarian-friendly, there’s salad!” I politely said my 12-year-old boy won’t survive on eating only salad. She told me to go talk to the head chef. I did, and he gave me the same answer: “Salad.” He then said “tell him to come to the back kitchen and I will feed him my cooking staff’s rice.”

“Just white rice?” I politely thanked him but I was fuming inside. So, he wanted to feed a boy going into puberty, competing in soccer for the school, white rice and salad; that’s basically sugar and water with traces of minerals.

So in my last letter to the school administration, I went all out. I emphasized that it’s not fair that kids with allergies or religious beliefs are respected, but vegetarians are not. Should we claim to be Hindu? Would his vegetarian choice be respected then? Without lying, I could claim to be Hindu, but it wouldn’t be intellectually honest as we consider it a philosophy, not a religion. I presented statistics regarding the percentage of the French population who are vegetarian. I even sent the letter to the parent association. I was told that they take this matter very seriously, but nothing came out of it. Omi wasn’t even allowed to bring his own food to school as this was explained to be not up to their hygienic standards.

It is important to give constructive suggestions as I did in my letters to the school. Most people have no idea what plant-based protein is, so I listed recipe ideas that would benefit all kids. Many schools have actually adopted “Meatless Mondays”, and other such challenges to help our children understand and start cutting back on meat-focused diets. These are not sustainable and we know it.

The industrial meat industry exists because of our overconsumption of meat, and reducing our meat intake will reduce the effects of climate change. Why are we thinking about this? For future generations. So I suggested to the school cafeteria to prepare lentils or quinoa in a tomato sauce, whole grain pasta with fresh pesto, whole grains with doufu, or any of a million other combinations of veggies and whole grains. Every child at the school would have benefited from such healthy food! It should, in fact, be the basis of any diet.

It must be obvious that I believe in this quite strongly, and even after all the external pressure to eat meat, Omi is now almost vegan totally of his own accord. His sister cooks her own food in her dorm at university, which involves whole grains and fresh veggies, and she rarely eats meat.

Equally passionate (albeit on the opposing end of the spectrum) is my loving, doting Beijing mother-in-law, who believes in feeding her only grandson his daily dose of meat. She feels it is just not conceivable, even irresponsible, to allow a child to grow up without eating meat. I’ve heard it so many times that I even started doubting my own beliefs. After all, I only stopped eating meat when I turned 16, so I wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

As a parent, you can not take your child’s health and make an experiment of it. So, I decided to get some scientific proof, and went to get a blood test for Omi. He was deficient in only one thing, vitamin D, explained the doctor. This was due to lack of sunlight, likely from living in Beijing.

When Omi goes on men’s nights out with his Beijing dad and his weightlifting buddies for dinner, next time he will know what to say when they make fun of him. “You won’t have energy! How can you grow muscles if you don’t eat meat?”

Omi gets annoyed. Even his dad, a firm believer in meat for muscles, tries to defend him. We have since discovered the winning argument. The greatest male athletes, like Michael Phelps, Carl Lewis, Edwin Moses and Mike Tyson are all vegetarian. Yes. Mike Tyson! I can hear them in my head all sadly protest the idea of Mike Tyson being a vegetarian. “Mike Tyson? Vegetarian? Not possible!” But yes, Mike Tyson. Vegetarian. Check.

Illustration by Andy Friend

This article appeared on p30-31 of beijingkids December 2017 issue.