Snow Flower' bridges women's experiences

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In 1970s Shanghai, Sophia and Nina are digging through

a box of family heirlooms when they come across tiny

shoes. What are these? Sophia says. They are so

tiny. These are for women with tiny bound feet, Sophia's

aunt explains to the girls. Three-inch golden lilies, she

says.

She's talking about my mother's, mother's, mother's

mother, Sophia clarifies to her friend. As the story of

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan progresses, the girls

come to realize how their lives are intricately linked

and vastly different from their 19th century

foremothers.

This contrast is the premise of Director Wayne Wang's

adaptation of Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret

Fan. While See's book is entirely set in the old days,

Wang complicates the laotong, the ancient contract

among female friends. His film adaptation shows how this

contract operates with a 19th century set of friends and contrasts their relationship with another

duo in contemporary China.

An intergenerational conversation

(The story) is so interesting but it would be more interesting if we could bring contemporary

Shanghai into this so we could see the paradoxes, so we could see how time has changed, Wang

said during a panel discussion at Stanford University. Such paradoxes in women's experiences

across time are the catalyst for a conversation swelling up at Stanford University about

intergenerational feminism. To facilitate this dialog, Stanford invited the driving forces behind the

new film Snow Flower and the Secret Fan to campus for ascreening and panel discussion with

Wang, Director of Photography Richard Wong, Producer Wendi Murdoch and Amy Tan, the

renowned author of The Joy Luck Club.

Snow Flower bridges womens experiences

byLILY BIXLERon 12/12/11 at 10:18 am
http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/snow-flower-bridges-womens-experienceshttp://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/snow-flower-bridges-womens-experienceshttp://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/snow-flower-bridges-womens-experienceshttp://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/snow-flower-bridges-womens-experiences


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The movie highlights how female leadership and perseverance through hardship are

transferred between generations. Viewers are invited into the lives of two sets of friends.

Flash back to 1830s Hunan province: Snow Flower and Lily were from different social

classes. A matchmaker set them up as life-long friends during their early years while their feetwere bound.

Within this world, a woman's worth was based on her ability to bear sons. Her beauty was

linked to her miniature lily flower feet, a complicated beauty construct, occurring until the

1940s, that requireddeforming foot binding among an estimated two billion women.

The laotang, then and now

While arranged marriages may not have provided companionship for these women, they

found friendship through the female contract, or laotang. Women often formed deep

emotional connections with their laotong. Men dominated the relationship and women hadto kind of form these bonds together to have a real emotional life, Wang explained.

Fast-forward to 1970s Shanghai to the other set of friends: Sophia and Nina. Coming from

different socio-economic backgrounds, they go against their parents wishes and become

friends. They sign their laotong on the back of their favorite album cover.

Both friendships face cultural limitations that test their laotong.

Often those limitations come from other women upholding patriarchal norms. In 19th

century

China, one of the young women married into a wealthy family and her mother- in law Lady

Lu disapproved of her cross-class friendship with her laotong, who married into poverty.Lady Lu forbade the girls from visiting each other.

Similarly, in the more contemporary story thread, an archetypal well-to-do stepmother

doesn't want her stepdaughter hanging out with her working-class laotong. At one point, the

stepmother finds the girls dancing to rock-and-roll in her living room so she abruptly turns

off the music and puts on a more becoming song to shape her daughter into a

sophisticated, eligible woman.

In both cases, the young women buck their culture's expectations to be together.

The film helps to weave a thread between 19th century and contemporary China. Now

modern women are tugging on that thread in an attempt to unravel the experiences of their

mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers. That exercise brings into focus unlikely

comparisons between then and now. In fact, Murdoch explained that after the film release,

the word laotong reemerged as a trendy colloquialism. The trend brings to bear current day

experiences of close female friends compared to how women in the old days relied on the

laotong.

During the panel discussion, Murdoch chimed in to share the experiences of the women in
http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/historical-perspective-gender-issues-chinahttp://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/historical-perspective-gender-issues-chinahttp://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/historical-perspective-gender-issues-chinahttp://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/historical-perspective-gender-issues-china


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Founded in 1974, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research

at Stanford University creates knowledge and seeks to

implement change that promotes gender equality at Stanford,

nationally, and internationally.

Copyright 2010 Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.

The panel discussion was organized by theCenter on Philanthropy and Civil Societyin

collaboration with the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, CDDRL Program on Social

Entrepreneurship and Development, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Institutefor Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS), Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) and

SparkSF.

This conversation will continueJan. 26when feminist activist andMs. magazine co-founder Gloria

Steinem comes to campus with leading editors, journalists and bloggers to discuss the future of

feminism.

Lily Bixleris a Bay Area journalist and media specialist. At the Clayman Institute, Lily works as a

public relations consultant.

her family: her maternal grandmother died in childbirth; her other grandmother was illiterate;

her mother was an engineer and a tiger mom who broke the one-child rule with three

daughters and a son. Now, Murdoch is developing her own style of motherhood; instead of

focusing on straight As, Murdoch asks her own 8-year-old whether she did her best.

Things have changed, she said.

I think it's amazing that we have more choice but again, we torture ourselves with high heels,said Murdoch, indicating to a pair of three-inch heels adorning her feet. Also we feel insecure,

and we have trouble with career and love life. That's why women friendships are important for

all of us, to help us cope with lifes challenges and hardship and sharing and secrets.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/gender/index.htmlhttp://pacscenter.stanford.edu/http://pacscenter.stanford.edu/http://pacscenter.stanford.edu/http://gender.stanford.edu/ms-40-future-feminism-symposiumhttp://gender.stanford.edu/ms-40-future-feminism-symposiumhttp://gender.stanford.edu/people/lily-bixlerhttp://gender.stanford.edu/people/lily-bixlerhttp://gender.stanford.edu/people/lily-bixlerhttp://gender.stanford.edu/ms-40-future-feminism-symposiumhttp://pacscenter.stanford.edu/http://www.stanford.edu/group/gender/index.html

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Snow Flower' bridges women's experiences