Mr. Chen, 43 years old, from Walnut Township, Dafang County, Bijie City, Guizhou Province, already has a screen name like "Father of Ten Children", and his usual signature is "Life is very hard, I am very happy to have you, you are the driving force of my struggle." Obviously, the core of this sentence is his 10 children, including his nine daughters and one son. On social **, he has posted too 111**, showing his family life, and he already has 2380,000 followers.
The story of this family is extraordinary, but in fact, Mr. Chen's return to rural life has a moral meaning. He met his wife today while working in Ningbo, Zhejiang, and they are both from the same village. Since they got married and had their first child in 2004, they have embarked on a growing family career, having eight daughters over the years, and after the birth of the last child, they have a boy, from which their family has been named "Perfect".
Mr. Chen shared his daily family life on his social **, everyone was eating, talking and laughing, and his ** received a large number of clicks and likes. Every part, every clip, every shot, is full of warmth and fun, recording their daily life and family joy. Although life may not be rich, Mr. Chan and his wife have shown us the beauty of life and the power of dreams with their full and happy family life.
An important challenge in this story comes from the traditional idea of "patriarchy". Worse than usual, the couple later gave birth to their tenth child, a boy, and you can imagine the great stress and distress at the time. Mr. Chen confessed, "Our husband and wife are definitely not patriarchal, and we still decided that no matter whether the 10th child is a boy or a girl, we will stop having another child." Such a firm stance may not be common in rural communities and is a repression of "possible" sexism that allows all children, male and female, to be treated equally.
Mr. Chen and his wife use their own lives to interpret this social phenomenon and find an understanding and justification for this mentality – their love for their children, male and female, and their belief in education. They tell us that although the notion that "there must be a boy" persists in their rural communities, their experiences and decisions prove that it is just a misunderstanding and expansion of traditional beliefs. Their stories teach us that love can transcend gender, identity, and societal expectations, and give children equal opportunities and rights.
All in all, the "perfect" story of Mr. Chan and his wife is a wonderful story, not just an incident or an individual case. Their stories are about warmth, love and resilience, and while we try to understand and embrace their family life, they also provide an opportunity to critique, question and reflect on the notion that the countryside has to have a boy.
So, I want to ask, do families in rural communities really need a boy to get it done? Can we really accept a world that feels incomplete just because there are no boys? Or, more importantly, perhaps to ask, do we need to rethink and question this societal expectation and pressure that arises because of gender? Can we see the alternative value of girls and boys in the family and the equal right to educate and care for them through the stories of Mr. Chan and his wife?