“The Evils of Society” and Miss Zhao (November
21,1919)
My friend Mr. Yinbo,158 in his editorial comments published the day before yesterday
in this paper, criticized my article, “Commentary on the Suicide of Miss Zhao,” saying
that I had placed all the blame on circumstances, letting Miss Zhao off scot-free, and
that this was not right. He wrote, “The action of Miss Zhao was a weak and negative
action. Such actions must never never be advocated.” I am basically in total agreement
with this positive critique, forcefully put forward by Mr. Yinbo. On the question of
the suicide of Miss Zhao, I had originally intended to criticize her on several different
small points. Among the several small points that I was considering, one was precisely
“against suicide.” Mr. Yinbo’s view and my view are really identical.
In the end, however, I cannot let “society” off. No matter how weak you might say
Miss Zhao’s act of committing suicide was, you cannot say she “died without cause.”
And the “cause” of her death, to one degree or another, indisputably did come from
outside of herself, from society. Since society contains “causes” that could bring about
Miss Zhao’s death, this society is an extremely dangerous thing. It was able to cause
the death of Miss Zhao; it could also cause the death of Miss Qian, Miss Sun, or Miss
Li. It can make “women” die; it can also make “men” die. There are still so many of us
who today have not yet died. We must be on our guard against this dangerous thing
that could find the occasion to inflict a fatal blow on us at any moment. We must
protest loudly, warn and awaken those fellow human beings who are not yet dead, and
cry out: “Society is evil!”
I said that there were three factors that drove Miss Zhao to her death. One was
her parents’ family, one was her fiance’s family, and one was society. Ultimately, both
her parents’ family and her fiance’s family are part of society. Her parents’ family and
her fiance’s family are each one component of society. We must understand that the
parents’ family and the fiance’s family are guilty of a crime, but the source of their
crime lies in society. It is true that the two families could themselves have perpetrated
this crime, but a great part of their culpability was transmitted to them by society.
Moreover, if society were good, even if the families had wanted to perpetrate this crime,
they would not have had the opportunity to do so. For example, if the Zhao family
had heard that Madame Wu, the
prospective mother-in-law, was bad, the go-between, Fourth Madame She, would
have insisted that it was not true. If this had taken place in Western society, there
would have been no system of go-betweens to force them together, and no lies to trick
them. Or again, if this had been in Western society, and Miss Zhao’s father had slapped
her in the face when she refused to get into the sedan chair, she could have taken him
to court and sued him, or she would have resisted in some way to protect herself. Or
yet again, when Miss Zhao wanted the Wu family to change the date, the wife of the
eldest brother of the Wu family had the right simply to “refuse adamantly,” and the
other side was forced to accept this “refusal,” and go ahead with the marriage. All these
are dirty tricks peculiar to the evil society of China.
Mr. Yinbo wonders why Miss Zhao didn’t just run away, and he says that it would
have been possible for her actually to do this. I say, true enough, but first let me raise
a few questions, after which I shall present my view.
1. Within the city of Changsha there are more than forty peddlers of foreign goods.
Within a 30-li radius of Shaoshan Village where I live there are seven or eight
peddlers of mixed foreign and domestic goods.159 Why is this?
2. Why is it that all the toilets in the city of Changsha are for men only, and none
for women?
3. Why is it you never see women entering a barber shop?
4. Why is it single women are never seen staying at hotels?
5. Why is it you never see women going into teahouses to drink tea?
6. Why is it that the customers hastening in and talking business in such silk shops
as the Taihefeng or in stores selling foreign merchandise such as Yutaihua are
never women, always men?
7. Why is it that of all the carters in the city not one is a woman, they are all men?
8. Why is it that at First Normal School outside South Gate there are no women
students? And why are there no male students at Old Rice Field First Normal?
Anyone who knows the answers to these questions will understand why it was that
Miss Zhao could not run away. The answers to these questions are not difficult. There
is only one general answer, that “men and women are extremely segregated,” that
women are not allowed a place in society. In this society, in which “men and women are
extremely segregated” and women are not allowed a place, even supposing Miss Zhao
had wanted to run away, where would she have run to?
To those who say that there are examples in this world of those who have run away,
I again reply, yes there are. Once more, I will give you an example. “In our village of
Shaoshan, there is a young woman of eighteen named Mao who is both intelligent and
good looking. She was married to a man named Zhong who was both extremely stupid
and extremely ugly. This young woman was extremely unwilling. Finally she threw off
her husband and had an affair with the son of a neighbor named Li. In August of this
year she ran away from her home to exercise the freedom to love.”
You certainly must think that this was very good. But…
“In less than two days, she was surrounded by some other people who notified her
family. Her family then sent someone to catch her.”
Just being caught wouldn’t have been so bad.
“She was dragged home, where she was beaten very severely and locked in an inner
room, where as before she was left with her stupid husband to fulfill that ‘most proper’
marital relationship.”
This still wasn’t much.
“Zhang San says, ‘She deserved to be beaten. She ran away. She’s shameless.’ ”
“Zhang Si160 agrees. ‘If you don’t beat her now, when will you! If a family produces
a girl like this, it’s really a miserable disgrace to their whole clan.’ ”
This Miss Mao should be seen as putting into practice a positive view of things.
Not afraid of danger or stopped by difficulties, she did everything possible to struggle
against the evil demon. But what was the result? As far as I can see she got only three
things: she got “caught,” she got “beaten,” and she got “cursed.”
If we look at it in this perspective, how could Miss Zhao have done anything else
but commit suicide? Alas for Miss Zhao! Alas for the evils of society!
After I had finished writing the draft of this article, I saw the critique of Mr.
Rulin.161 He also emphasizes the aspect of society, on which our views agree. But
from the standpoint of Miss Zhao, as to whether or not there were other means by
which she could have fulfilled her free will, and what the relative value of the different
means might be, I will discuss that next time. Any further details on what Miss Zhao’s
personal name was, or what school she graduated from, or whether she had bound or
natural feet, would be most welcome.

--- Notes

157 Long’s piece, which had already been mentioned by Mao in his article of November 16, appeared
on November 15. This article must therefore have been written on November 18, though it was not
published until the following day.
158 As already noted, the article which Mao says he wrote “yesterday,” i.e. on November 18, appeared
on November 19, in the same issue of the Dagongbao as this one.


159 Peng Huang.


160 The peddlers to whom Mao alludes were those who brought cotton cloth, particularly that used
for women’s undergarments and for children’s clothes, to people’s homes. The point of this reference is
that, unlike the men referred to under item 6 below, who hung about silk shops, women were sequestered
in their houses and could only wait for the peddlers to come to them.
161 Zhang San and Zhang Si (literally “Third Brother” and “Fourth Brother” Zhang) are names like
John Doe or Bill Smith commonly used in Chinese to represent typical individuals.