This is the second issue of the "Mother-Daughter Dialogue" column of "People".
The protagonists of this dialogue are three generations of women, 18-year-old daughter Shang Chuyuan, 46-year-old mother Shen Yifei and 70-year-old grandmother Wu Genmei.
In the traditional concept of motherhood, Wu Genmei is the kind of mother who gives everything for her daughter. She was born in 1952 in a village in Suzhou called "Play Character Village" and later became an ordinary employee of a county-level light bulb factory. In the environment of "the uselessness of reading", she gave everything she could for her daughter Shen Yifei to attend high school and college, and eventually became an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Fudan University.
Shen Yifei was taught by her mother from an early age to become a qualified wife and mother, focusing on her husband and children. But in the context of different eras, Shen Yifei refused such self-sacrifice, and she tried her best to preserve the opportunity for personal development. But she also realized that she had to hand over part of the family division of labor to her mother Wu Genmei, which was "exploitation" of her mother. Although she did get rid of her mother's abduction to some extent, she also felt guilty about her daughter Shang Chuyuan, and she thought that she had "delayed" her daughter because she did not do her best to find resources for her daughter.
On how a woman faces the responsibilities and constraints of "traditional motherhood", here are three generations of women in the family – how a mother who is willing to sacrifice herself under the same gender experience views another "unqualified" mother; a daughter who has been disciplined by the "traditional feminine code" since childhood, how to teach her daughter.
Wen | Lin Qiuming
Edited | Golden Stone
Video | Shigeichi Ai
Wu Genmei
70 years old, retired worker
"I can sacrifice myself to support my daughter"
1
I was born when I was just liberated. My whole life has been changing with the times in this society, as if it has never stopped.
In 1976, I gave birth to Shen Yifei. She's a little younger, I thought, can this child be fed? At that time, I liked to read books, and I had a little spare time for confinement, anyway, with my children, I took a magazine and read it. One of the articles in it is about the story of six college girls in the dormitory, happy things, contradictory things. I'm so novel. I didn't go to junior high school, let alone college. These are so interesting, I myself do not have the opportunity to go to college again, then my daughter, or let her go to college in the future. Suddenly, the idea arose. At that time, the college entrance examination had not yet been resumed. I thought, by that time, if she goes to college, I'm going to train her.
I didn't think about what she was going to do when she grew up, I just thought that she should learn knowledge and culture. The desire to get her to college is great. I'm going to make up for all the years I haven't been studying for my daughter.
I gave birth to her in a small town. At that time, the countryside basically favored sons over daughters, sons had to go to school, and it didn't matter if daughters didn't go to school, they had to marry out anyway. The town is better, but everyone will still focus on raising their sons. Plus in the seventies they all said that reading was useless, I didn't go to school as a farmer, you went to high school and became a farmer, we were on the same line.
My little sister in the workshop also did not understand, why do you want to train children to read? My daughter later went to the key high school in Suzhou, and I went to see her every other week. At that time, the traffic was not very convenient, and the buses turned around. Many colleagues say, do you go every other week? She came back every month anyway. I said, I should go, go and see how she is studying, and I will communicate with the teachers again. None of them understood me, and I really couldn't find anyone with a common language.
The first thing she did when she came back was to finish her homework. She does her homework and I am always by her side. I came home from work to check, did something wrong, and redoed it. Sometimes the writing is not good, and I tear up the book and throw it out. I said, you go to the teacher tomorrow and be criticized.
Wu Genmei
At that time, we lived in a courtyard and the children rushed back and forth to play. She was only five or six years old, and she scolded others with them, and I hit her twice in the mouth, and her nose was bleeding. I said, you've made a habit, you're going to go to the big city later, and there's no one cursing there.
She was a little afraid of me, very good at looking at my eyes, and when she saw that this thing my mother didn't like and couldn't accept, she wouldn't do it. We adults talk, she sometimes has to interject, I look at her, call her name, she will immediately stop.
She didn't disappoint me, from the first grade to the end of high school, did not leave a "three good students". Every time I took the grade book, I rushed to my workshop with joy, Mom, I am a good student. I looked at it and said, right, right. It seems that she should take the three good students, and it is not normal to take it. There were no words like," "You're the best," "How are you so great?" I just said, the teacher is very spoiled you, how to write you is good, or I will add a sentence of your shortcomings.
But in fifth grade, she wrote an essay on what the title was that I forgot. The day after I finished my essay, my teacher called me to school. The teacher said, you have to take good care of your daughter, her compositions are basically copied, I have been a Chinese teacher for a lifetime, yesterday's essay, I did not see the primary school students can write it, either you taught her, or where she copied.
Didn't that wrongfully accuse her? I told him, teacher, she writes every essay, I sit next to it, yesterday wrote this essay, I looked at her to write, today you should praise her, but in class said that her essay was copied, more hurt her self-esteem, you have been a chinese teacher all your life, probably the first time you met such a smart child! You should apologize to her.
Of course, the teacher would not apologize. I came back to my daughter and said, this teacher, there is no level of yours, you come to be a language teacher, he said that your composition is copied, you don't pay attention to it, anyway, your mother knows that you wrote it yourself.
At that time, in the factory, I didn't go dancing, nor did I play mahjong or sing, I always went with her. Growing up, her fleece shirt was made by myself. I have a book about knotted thread, there are a lot of patterns in it, which one she likes, I will follow that pattern to pick up, the two of us together. The design was done, she did her homework, and I knotted the line next to it.
She was about to go to high school, and I bought her the best and most expensive yarn, 18 pieces of 5 pounds, and found a "smooth sailing" pattern, and the front was a canopy sailboat, which was very beautiful. I said, this is a good meaning, you have to go to high school and college smoothly, we all have to have smooth sailing.
At that time, Sunday was her happiest time, and if it was spring, or if the weather was a little warmer, I would take her to the field to see the cauliflower and see the green. No matter how busy I am, I will take her out for an hour or two. We didn't have much fun at the time, we just wanted her to open her eyes.
So although she said that she was afraid of me, she would not be alienated from me, and she knew that I still cared about her and still loved her. We were very open to each other.
I remember when I was just laid off, someone in the same workshop advised me to do the clothing business, saying that you can definitely do business, follow me, and you will be rich in two years. I thought, I follow you out early and return late to make money, then won't my daughter give up? I rebuffed her, and I said I'd better make a little money myself, and look at her while making some money. I think that's the right choice. When I am not capable and cannot develop, I still cultivate the next generation, which is my main contribution to the family. I have no diploma or culture, so I can only support my daughter and sacrifice myself.
Shen Yifei and Wu Genmei
2
As a mother, on the one hand, I think she wants to study, on the other hand, I think that girls will always have to marry out in the future, if they do not learn housework well, they will go to the in-laws' house in the future, and the mother-in-law will have to pick and choose. It wasn't until 1996 that our family had flush toilets, and until then we had used regular toilets. I told her to learn to brush the toilet, she cried, she said why did she ask me to do this? I said, after the mother-in-law will ask you to clean the toilet, what do you do? When I go to my grandparents' house for dinner in the New Year, I will always teach her the rules, dress neatly, sit in a sitting position, and stand in a standing position. The daughter wants her mother to teach it, and when it comes to calling people, people must respond to you when they talk to you, and their eyes should be smiling and squinting. So she hated going out and felt unfree.
Later, she went to a key high school in Jiangsu Province, and then came to Shanghai to study at a university, and with her own outlook on life, I did not have the ability to take care of it. All I have to do is make some money for her to live better in Shanghai.
When I first came to Shanghai from Suzhou to live with her, she was studying women's studies in Beijing, and I went to this class during the summer and winter vacations, and I thought it would be good to learn more. But then she gave birth to Youyou (Shen Yifei's daughter's nickname), I said that my daughter was born well, can you go again every six months? But that semester was the last course, and you can only get a diploma after attending it. She said that if I don't go, the front is equivalent to saying that it is white, is it not a waste of previous achievements? She gave me a titling injection and threw it at me.
I was really upset, it was only 6 months at that time. She is very skinny, will turn over in 4 months, and climb very fast in 6 months. I certainly can't be alone in Shanghai, so I went back to my hometown, and there are sisters there, and they can take the handle. When Shen Yifei is well studied in Beijing, we will return to Shanghai.
There is no milk to eat, and they are not willing to drink milk powder. My little sisters came to help, and everyone tried to figure out how to teach her how to drink milk powder. They say that your daughter is career-oriented, that you hindered her career, and that you will regret it later and blame you. I said, I don't know if this diploma is worth it, now as a teaching assistant in the school, I have a job steadily, isn't it already very good? I don't want her to develop, it's pretty good now.
One year, shen Yifei and Shang Jiangang (Shen Yifei's husband) both went abroad and threw her in Shanghai. I remember that on September 1, the couple had just arrived abroad, and on September 9, they suddenly fell ill and were born inexplicably. The doctor came and went and said she had a problem inside her head, that she was going to do CT, that she was going to do MRI, and that scared me to death.
I have always had conflicts with her in these places, I have dedicated my life to this daughter, sacrificed so much for her, she is good at everything else, just not understanding people, even if she is a little considerate, she will never throw such a small daughter to me, even my mother is unlucky. I was very aggrieved. How could she not be considerate of me?
At that time, we went out with Youyou on Sundays, and after a long day of playing, we were very tired, and when we came home, they all said, I'm going to die of exhaustion, I'm going to sleep. At this time, they don't care if they have it, and I have to cook. I said, you're exhausted, have you considered whether I'm tired or not? I'm definitely more tired than you guys.
My daughter said, we are all tired, why should we eat at home, we can go out to eat. At that time, our economic conditions were not very good, and I thought, if you can eat at home, don't go outside. In the end, everyone was a little uncomfortable.
Regarding being a mother, I have always told her that compared with me, you are an unqualified mother, and you do not have children. For example, Charlie (Shen Yifei's younger son), I still can't put it down. I keep saying Charlie is pathetic. Teacher Shen was too busy, didn't have time on weekends, and rarely took Charlie out. I said, even if you squeeze some time out, you must accompany Charlie, your son is too lacking in companionship.
We used to beat children and scold children, but they have a fairly good emotional foundation with children, so they don't hate you. But she came back with very little time with Charlie, and couldn't bear to say that Charlie was not good that, that was not good. She was very fond of her son. She always said, we Charlie is great, Charlie is doing a good job. In fact, Charlie is very clear in his heart, I am not doing very well, you are just trying to have a good relationship with me.
I know in my heart that Teacher Shen can't do everything, don't give up his career, and don't give up on his children. Maybe in the modern concept, I am just taking care of life, but I also tell her the truth, now you are like Charlie, such a mother, like a mother?
3
My daughter always had to give me money, sometimes going out with my sister, and she was also responsible for my sister's expenses. I joke that money can't buy everything. Yes and no, they all know in their hearts that Grandma has paid so much for us.
Over the years, I have also learned to let go of some slowly.
Before, when they didn't come back, I wouldn't be able to sleep, always wondering if they wanted dinner or not. Now, I've been changed by my daughter, slowly and slowly, letting go of this this this year and that next year. I feel tired today, I would say, stop cooking, I'm tired today! They all agreed. My daughter said that mom seems to have changed now.
We are now very clearly divided, I should manage what I should manage, and I should not manage what I should not manage. Let's say they live upstairs, and there's something wrong with the bathroom, and I used to have to take care of it. Now I don't care, you can use it, I don't look at it. You can't put the water in the bathtub, and if I don't take a shower anyway, I won't care.
I freed up my time and did whatever I wanted. A few years ago, a few of our sisters went to Taiwan to travel around the island together, from the north of Taiwan to the south, and went to Yunnan with a few classmates. We also set off from Shanghai, first to Zhuhai, then to Shenzhen, shenzhen to Guangzhou, to Hong Kong, Macao. We went to a lot of places.
We have a piano at home. In 2019, some people went abroad to study, and they happened to be free. Now, I can recognize staves and play a few Hanon etudes. My goal is to practice for another five years, and when I can play a decent tune, I'll go to a concert before I'm 80. I also want to ask some friends to play together, and the old people who love to learn to play the piano will come to a concert.
Wu Genmei was practicing
About five or six years ago, my daughter just started studying this kind of family education or something. She asked me a question, Mom, what gift do you like most on Mother's Day? I said, now I don't need gifts, Mother's Day you will take me to the street for a day, have a meal, just the two of us, don't take Charlie, there is, nothing, two people romantic. From this time on, every Mother's Day, she would remember that to take me out shopping, she also had to buy a dress.
That's how we express our love, chat together, have a meal, and talk in private. We are a big family, there are many things in the family, and mother and daughter sometimes do not have so much thought and space to say the words of two people, so these are very precious.
We are as intimate now as before, sitting for an hour and having an hour to speak. She was also a little dependent on me. Today she came back and said, Oh, I'm exhausted, but my mother is here. I knew it would be hard for her to come back from outside, and I wouldn't want to eat anything greasy, so I made three vegetables and an egg stew. [Laughs]
When I returned to China, we also said a lot, I went out with my little sister to go shopping, and I showed her the clothes I bought. She will point out that this pair of pants is still missing under you, how do you match it. She bought a dress abroad and took a picture of it for me. So was her mother. Sometimes the three of us talk for more than an hour as soon as we video chat, and we're all doing this kind of thing.
I look back on my life and have no regrets. When I was young, the money I could make, I thought about it, I earned it, I have done a lot of things in my life, although I have not made a big career. However, no matter what others think of me, I feel that I am still very valuable, and I have improved my life and that of my family.
I remember one day, I went to have a parent-teacher conference for Youyou, and she was worried that Grandma would go wrong, so she stayed downstairs in the classroom, and when I walked into the school, she saw it, and ran to my eyes at a very fast speed, saying, Grandma, you are coming. As soon as I saw her running over, I immediately thought, Oh, how fast, my daughter is running toward me, as if it were just yesterday. When I was a child, my daughter was the same, I went to school to visit her, she saw me from afar, she would run so fast and fast.
After the parent-teacher conference, some of the first reactions were to ask me, Grandma, it's been too long, do you feel comfortable sitting on a stool? My daughter was like this, we were huddled in the classroom, and she asked me, Mom, are you tired?
This was one of the greatest comforts for me. When I think of unhappy things, I think, how good these two girls are, maybe this is my happiness. The three women in this family are together, and this is how they lived.
Shen Yifei
Aged 46, associate professor of sociology
"It's not fair to sacrifice yourself to be a good mother"
1
In my opinion, my mom is a very reliable mom, and she tries to do everything that my mom can do.
When I was a child, she could knit the clothes by hand to look good, and the teacher at school looked at my clothes and said can your mother share this trick tomorrow? She is also very delicate in terms of diet, and our family's various dim sums and various dishes and meat dishes are very good. She took good care of me. When I was a child, I was poor, but there was often a small bowl of dishes on the dinner table, such as shrimp, which I ate alone. I can eat fruit every day, and there is no fruit, so she candy mixes tomatoes.
When I was studying, many people did not study very seriously, and even had the "theory that reading is useless", saying that those who took scalpels were not as good as those who took razors, and those who made atomic bombs were not as good as those who sold tea eggs, but my mother paid special attention to reading and always felt that learning and education were very important.
My mom would play cards with me, talk to the adults at family parties, and I would listen over there. Today's young people have a misunderstanding that their mother never said to herself that I love you, indicating that I don't love me enough. But real emotional support means that a lot of my activities will call you together, you often laugh with me, I make you very relaxed, these are called emotional support.
You can't ask a mother twenty or thirty years ago to learn to say "Baby, I love you", she couldn't do it, at that time everyone thought that children had to knock to grow up, scolding education, so there was nothing to complain about, no one had the ability to get out of the times to give you something.
My mother is also a typical traditional woman, although she thinks that I am as naughty as a boy, but she also wants to raise me to be a good wife, and she must let me learn various housework from an early age. I learned to do handicrafts and knit sweaters with her early on, and I had a big fight with her because of the toilet. The toilet was too smelly, and I was determined not to brush it. My mother said that in the future, as a wife, you must learn to do this work. I said, I will find a way to make this toilet disappear in the future! My mom argues with me, and she beats me up and says, you have to learn these things.
The mother-daughter relationship is different from other relationships because our gender experiences are similar, I am a daughter, and I will also be a wife and a mother, and these roles and experiences are more inheritable. I also became a mother.
Shen Yifei Tuyuan "We Have Never Talked About Love" official Weibo
But unlike my mom, I didn't like kids until I had children. I saw other people's children, all watching from a distance. I think that little animal is terrible, and I can't figure it out. The reason I have a baby is very simple, the child can make me not outdated, in the future old, there will be someone will still be around you, this connection is very close, anyway, I am for this selfish purpose.
It seems that many people become a great mother the moment the child is born, and there will be maternal love, but after I give birth to the child, I only feel too tired and too painful. Children are born very ugly, some people say, your child is so beautiful, looks like you. I said it was ugly, or did I say it was like me?
I began to study gender in 2002, when China Women's College had the first national gender theory class, which was going to last for three consecutive years and invited a lot of teachers to come over. I was so hard to get into this class. In the summer of 2004, when the class was in Beijing, there were exactly six months, and I did not consider whether to take you to Beijing at all. I told my husband that I was going to study and that I had to be weaned. My husband agreed. Unexpectedly, my mother thought that it was best for a child to eat breast milk for one year. I said where is this saying, if I breastfeed her for a year, will I have to work later? I went to get the milk injection and left three days later, and I thought there was no problem.
I was in the transition, from the Department of International Politics to Sociology, and I had to find a new research direction. If I give up that class, it means that the previous learning is abolished, there will be no me today, and there will be problems in academic development. I need to make a decision. If at this stage I am very responsible for my mother, I am very responsible for my children, then I am not responsible for myself. I weighed the pros and cons of each, nothing more than my mom complaining, and I made her work hard. I'll be back in a little over a month and can take it with her.
But my mom couldn't understand it at all.
My mom always felt that I wasn't wholehearted enough for both of my children and wasn't qualified enough to be a mother. In addition, in the past two years, I have been relatively busy, and there is indeed less companionship, but there is more companionship from my father, and the family always has to divide the work, not stereotyped division of labor, what must be done by women, and what men do. But the old man does not have this gender view, I am not there, my mother thinks that our children are not accompanied, it is my mother is not responsible enough.
By her standards, her mom is much better than me. She is a traditional Chinese woman, once she has a husband, has children, must take them as the focus of life, all interests are based on them first, but I am not, I also strive to be a good mother, but I will not completely sacrifice my interests, I think that is unfair.
2
My husband and I came to Shanghai when we just graduated, very poor, my first month as a counselor was a salary of more than 600 yuan, and he was more than 800 yuan a month. My mom came to Shanghai because we really needed her help. But on the other hand, at that time, my father was working in a foreign country, and I was also very uneasy about her being at home alone, and everyone thought that this arrangement was very good, so they lived together.
Later, my mother was going to criticize me at every turn. She often said that if I were to be a normal college teacher, with children at home, and not so tossed, she could be like everyone else, square dancing is very comfortable. I really didn't understand her, and I did sacrifice my mother's interests for my own development, making her harder.
In fact, I will also make some compromises. When I was a scholar, I didn't travel a lot, I only went to national meetings twice a year, and most of my time was at home. I set limits for myself, at most one day a week without eating at home, and I never throw my children aside for my own amusement, but only ensure my own interests at critical moments.
The concept of "career and family opposition" was slowly born in the post-80s generation. My mother's generation did not think that this was a problem, while working, while having children, the unit has a nursery, what contradictions in life? In the past, women did not have their mothers to help, but there were units to help, and no one felt that the women who worked were opposed to a good wife, and the Iron Maiden also had to be a good wife.
When I wrote The Book Who's In Your House, my initial confusion was that all modern family theories were telling you that industrial development would lead to smaller family and loose intergenerational relationships. But I found that this is not the case in China, that I have a closer relationship with my mother than the previous generation, and that I see many of my friends around me doing the same. Why is our generation like this? Is modern family theory wrong? That's when I started doing this research.
We need parents because the social support system is not enough for us to be able to do so that, as in the era of the planned economy, the nursery is in the unit, and I and the children are in and out. Now the nursery and kindergarten leave at 3:30 a.m., and I have to work until five or six o'clock, and sometimes I have evening classes. Parents come to help, in a sense it is true that we are using the labor of the elderly, I admit that this is the exploitation of my mother, according to the reason, raising children is the responsibility of our generation, parents do not have this obligation to help you raise a small generation.
But exploiting the old man does not mean that I am a bad person, we will not take this labor for granted, but will also take care of her life and help her think. I'll reciprocate her financially, take her shopping for clothes, and be a little nicer to her. Because of me, my mother also had a different vision. Without me, my mom would probably have lived in a small town for the rest of her life. My husband and I worked hard to earn money so that we could buy a good piano at home and have an hourly worker to help. I often encouraged my mom to go out on trips, help her arrange cruises or something, and take her to enjoy everything I could enjoy.
After the meal, Shen Yifei and Wu Genmei browsed the piano lesson information together
I would sit next to my mom on a regular basis and talk casually, and I needed to understand what my mom was doing, what she was thinking, and trying to keep such a deep conversation once a month as possible.
I made everyone feel that I needed my mother very much, because this is her very strong spiritual core, she is so sacrificial, behind the sacrifice spirit is "I am needed by others". If I said I didn't need you, then the front was all gone, and she would be very sad.
I sometimes tell my mom that if you shift your gender consciousness a bit, you're likely to be a very successful career woman today.
She did many business ventures when she was young, but in the end she failed to stick to it. Every time she wanted to be bigger, she wanted my dad to take the lead and she to do the support. But my dad wasn't good at handling these details, and he wasn't so good at doing it often. I told her that if you didn't think about my dad and you got it up yourself, you would succeed.
But she was so old that she had to become a feminist, learn advanced gender awareness, and reflect on how much failure she had been in her past life, and there was no need. She wholeheartedly treats her children and puts the interests of her husbands before her forever, which is her strength and benefits our whole family. If a person can be self-consistent, assume the responsibilities that should be assumed, and enjoy the rights and interests they deserve, it will be enough.
3
Life is like stepping on a watermelon peel, sliding to where it counts, but when stepping on the watermelon peel, a little more serious, this is my attitude towards life. I have the same attitude towards my daughter, you draw a box for her, she will not come out of this box, in the box she can run freely, wildly.
I remember there was a first grade of elementary school, and once the school assigned writing, two words twice, but to write in print. After she finished writing, the teacher felt that it was not enough, and she returned to me, and she said to me, Mom, do you think I wrote well today? I said very good. It was handed over and returned by the teacher. She told me again, you have to feel super good to be able to, I looked at it and said, super good. It still won't work. I said I'll help you write it. After writing it, the teacher said no, and I also broke down. She found that I didn't work very well, and she said, or I am strict with myself. She had felt since she was a child that I was useless and couldn't help her.
But when she was a child, a very serious thing happened between us.
We were going to play in a temple in Bali, and there was a big banyan tree, and I saw that a friend had been pushed down the tree, and the friend's mother had also discovered this. I criticized yes, and she said that the girl had actually pushed her before, but I didn't see it. I said, no matter what happens in front of you, it's not right for you to push people down the tree. She was also very sharp, so I ran the back of my hand over her face, and her nosebleed came out. My husband was so angry that he went crazy with me on the spot, and she cried very hard.
I don't know why I was so emotionally angry at that moment. About a few months later, I chatted with my husband about my own life - when I was in the fourth grade of elementary school, my grades had always been good, the math teacher especially valued me, and once after the exam, I didn't do so well, he asked me to do it again, using the new results. After being discovered by another girl, she took this story to the class to tell, rendering me with various backstages, and this teacher was eccentric. Encourage all the girls to ignore me. I'm a very good friend, and for a week no one paid any attention to me, and I was particularly uncomfortable.
Because of this traumatic memory, I was particularly afraid that my child would one day encounter such exclusion and had been socially anxious about her. When she had a bad relationship with her friend, all my negative emotions came out.
This was the starting point of my family education, when I had studied psychology and found that there were many problems that psychology still could not solve, and people still had times when their emotions were out of control. So I went back and learned to start from sociology and do family education.
We have a body is not so good, but she has been very obedient since she was a child, very obedient, other children have taken the training class, she did not, so the results are relatively backward. But for me, she lives a fairly normal life, and her IQ is not low, so don't worry.
I used to write a lot of parenting diaries. For example, in 2011, we were 7 years old, and when we were eating, she made up a joke, once there was a bun that walked and walked, tired and hungry, it ate itself; for example, in 2013, she began to learn to play yarn, she had a lot of ideas; for example, she participated in the squadron captain campaign... Sorted out a lot of such stories.
There were very young times when I was like a goalkeeper because she didn't know what dangers were and what things couldn't be done. Slowly as she grows up, the mother should be like a coach, to tell her, baby, how to pronounce this word; baby, this behavior can not be done. I would encourage her to be a little braver, a little more proactive, and not to back down. Society tells the girl to back off, and the family pushes her back and balances a little bit so she will grow up better.
Now that she's 18 years old, at this stage like an audience, she's running over there and doesn't need me much anymore. If I could make her feel that the person in the audience was my friend, my mother would be very successful. My own life is colorful and busy to death, there is no time to watch her every day, we each have our own stage.
We are all in our own independent world, but we don't feel farther and farther away. The mother-daughter relationship is ultimately an emotional support, it should be a pleasant, happy support system, not a mutually unhappy one, I owe you or you owe me, I don't think so.
One day, I was chatting with Youyou. I said, I compared me with Gu Ailing's mother, she made a lot of efforts for Gu Ailing, helped her to find resources, Gu Ailing can develop so well. In fact, you are also a genius child, but the mother can not do this, the mother will not do her best to help you find resources, will not accompany you all the time, consider how to grow better. It has been said that Gu Ailing's current identity is more "Gu Ailing's mother", but you have many other identities, and these identities are also important. Besides, I don't think you're bad.
I said, you suddenly relieved me of my guilt.
Shen Yifei was on a video call with her daughter and listened to her complain about her troubles in life
Shang Chu Qian
18 years old, senior high school student
"A good mother is really hard to define"
1
When I was a child, my mother was just an ordinary professor, not so busy, and could take classes two or three times a week. She spends most of her time at home. We have a desk at home, and I'm doing my homework at one end, and she's working on the other. She just sat there, and when I finished my homework and put myself in my bag, she wouldn't look at how it was going. She was working and performing her mother's duties.
My mom had these jobs and helped her to a certain extent. They give her somewhere else to distract herself, to let her know that she has her success at work, and it doesn't really have much to do with me, and it's good not to focus all on the child.
Many parents will think that if their children have good grades and stand out, they will be very successful, but my mother does not seem to have this idea, she feels that she has been quite successful and confident, so she does not care much about my studies.
My mom never urged me, usually I urged my mom. I told her every day, can you be promoted to a professor, why haven't you been promoted, why haven't you written a thesis? My mom and my brother are hedonists, my dad and I belong to the hot-blooded pie, and when we get home at night, my dad and I have to start exercising and go out for night runs. My mom and my brother came home feeling too tired and wanted to lie down. My dad and I dragged them both along.
My mom and I are more like friends, not particularly close, just good friends who simply listen to each other. We called, and my mom just asked me, how's it going lately? Then she started talking about herself. We talked on the phone for an hour, and 40 minutes of that was spent talking about herself what had happened recently.
My friend's mother would send him four or five WeChat messages a day intermittently, and he wouldn't reply to one. I was particularly surprised, I said, how can not even your mother's WeChat back, I and my mother are the opposite, from small to large, I will return to my mother's WeChat, but my mother often does not return to my WeChat, annoyed, and often send me WeChat. It's no use for me to gamble.
Shang Chu Qian
Growing up, I didn't feel like my mother was a preacher, she wasn't an unattainable, authoritative being.
I remember that when I was a child, I always wanted to dance, but my mother put me into the choir with a relationship, and she said that she had entrusted this relationship, and she was embarrassed not to go directly, so she could only go. My mom has always given me the feeling that if I make this decision that is solid and has less impact on my family, she will support me. But if I don't go to this matter and it has a greater impact on her, then she will dominate this matter.
A few days ago my mother was waiting at the airport, we talked about Gu Ailing and her mother, my mother also talked about this matter, she said, Gu Ailing's mother accompanied Gu Ailing to ski, but she did not give me much help from childhood to adulthood. I wanted to learn to dance, and I was sent to the choir.
I gave her a point of view called liberation. When I chose the university, the university I wanted to go to was a little low in ranking, but I would have a good time there, and that's what mattered. My mom said she felt like my words were a relief to her. I wasn't as good as Gu Ailing, she used to think that she was delaying me, but seeing that I could live in the moment, she was much more relaxed.
2
Sometimes, Mom is a professor and not so good. She's a professor, you can't contradict her, she'll say every time, what we do to show how to do, how to do, all the research is the study, there is no way to continue to argue. Gender, society, she has done research, all of them are reasonable, really noisy.
There's a little bit of a sunken part of my nose that I've always felt is because of that slap when I was a kid traveling in Bali. But she also did not apologize to me, to be honest, it has been 18 years, she does not apologize has become a habitual thing, she suddenly apologized to me, I will still be very panicked, feel the day has changed.
From junior high school to high school to the present, the decisions are all made by myself, the tutoring classes are selected by myself, and the teachers are all found by myself. She just gives the money and chooses a way to charge. Of course, if it's too expensive, you need to ask about the budget first.
I remember going to the outer attachment small at that time, I also wrote a commitment letter, signed a pledge, recorded a video, I said I want to choose the upper external annex, my mother said, the upper external attachment will be very bitter, I said, I just want to choose bitter. My mother took a good video and said, this is legal effect, don't regret it. The special feature of our family is that we have been writing a letter of guarantee there, and the same is true of my parents quarreling. My parents didn't give me the opportunity to rebel, everything was signed and signed, and I said that if I wanted to do it, I would have to bear the consequences.
My mom would give advice, but she wouldn't help me choose at all, and a lot of times I would be broken. Sometimes I think, sometimes I am distressed, I give me too much freedom, I will think, just you help me choose them all. But in our house, she does things about her, everyone gives a suggestion, I want to do something about me, just give a suggestion, and finally the person who is most responsible makes a decision.
I wasn't a spoiled child, and when we were intimate, we were lying on the bed and talking together on the couch. We talk a lot, but to be honest, neither of us knows each other 100% as if we still have 10% of each other.
But I will be very concerned about what my parents are doing at work, and my parents' careers have a revealing effect on me. Only my parents would tell me in a down-to-earth manner what the experience of people who came over was, and sometimes it felt like I was asking them for a sermon — one of the questions I most wanted to ask my mom was, what was her ideal influence on society? Where does she want to get? I do everything with a sense of purpose, and I wonder what her goals are?
Shang Chuyuan and his mother Shen Yifei provided a picture of the interviewee
3
I rarely watch my mom's video content, but every time I click on it, quickly triple-click, and then turn off the video.
The best gender consciousness she gave me was that there was no gender consciousness, and my grandmother would tell me that the rice must be eaten, otherwise I would not be able to marry. My mom would tell me, what's wrong with the girls, it doesn't matter. If I were naughty, my mom would have told "me" not to be naughty, not "girl" not to be so naughty, and there would be no prefix like "girl".
But my mother said that she was an independent woman, but our family often retorted to her, where are you independent? You haven't left your mother's help in your 40s and are still living with your mother.
My mom never left my grandmother, she doesn't know much about cooking until now, and my mom was able to be an independent woman, fly around, be a professor, and try all sorts of things because my grandma was at home with me and my brother. Grandma devoted all her time to the family.
Unlike my mother, I can cook and take care of my own life. Because I knew that my mom would never help me as much as my grandmother did with her. We used to joke that I had to have a baby early, or my grandmother wouldn't be able to move, and my mother wouldn't be able to help. [Laughs]
Mom's feedback to Grandma was mainly financial. When we go out on a trip, we take Grandma to play with us, of course, hoping that Grandma will continue to take care of us (laughs), but also hoping that Grandma can't miss this. We would also call someone else's grandmother so that my grandmother had a companion. Grandma is very careful, she will bring a handkerchief, mosquito patches, sunscreen, sunglasses are in her bag, tired she will wipe our sweat to see if the sunscreen is applied, whether there is a mosquito bite.
So much communication with my grandmother has only begun in the past two years, and last year I stayed at home and wrote the book "Grandma and Her House". I realized that family is also a living subject, I began to care about how the family is feeling, what troubles my mother will encounter, can I solve it for her - before I did not necessarily have to call them a month, my parents would not call, after writing my grandmother's book, I opened the conversation box, I think I should also undertake some of the "emotional services" of the family that my mother said, bear the emotional input and output.
Shang Chuyuan's "Grandma and Her House" was written by Shen Yifei on Weibo
I also have a very new understanding of my grandmother. Brought up by her, she wouldn't tell me about her, just say, did you eat the meal, whether the meal was good or not, very shallow conversations, like familiar strangers. Grandma is a "grandma" image for me, and after writing this book, I will know that grandma is also a mother, and a strict mother, but she is willing to give my mother freedom. She would give my mom a little money to ride a few kilometers to take a photo. At that time, taking pictures was still not a very good thing, and it could not be accepted by the people at that time.
I also learned that outside of my mother, my grandmother used to be a worker. She had her own childhood and would work hard for herself when she was younger. In the second year of my mother's high school, my grandmother did a lot of work, and at that time she didn't know whether my mother could be admitted to Fudan, but for this goal, I always worked hard to earn this tuition fee and constantly did chores.
I found that all three of us are self-motivated people. My grandmother is the kind of person who will work hard anytime, anywhere, and so is my mother. She can actually be a professor, but she will also do a lot of things, often fly everywhere, every time I call her almost at the airport, not to catch a plane, or waiting for makeup, she has a lot of ideal factors in it.
I think of myself, in fact, I don't need to learn Korean, learning this language may not change my life, but I just want to learn to see. The three of us have this commonality, and it's their stories that give me that strength.
A good mom is hard to define, and for me anyway, mom is that kind of bottom-up existence. She is very busy, but fortunately there is a moment in life that needs her very much, and she is there.
Wu Genmei, Shen Yifei and Shang Chuyuan had a video call
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Wu Genmei, Shen Yifei and Shang Chuyuan's "Mother-Daughter Dialogue"
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