A Chinese 'auntie’ went on a solo road trip and now she’s a feminist icon
She spends each night alone, curled up in a one.4m-by-2.4m rooftop tent, counterbalanced on stilts above her car. She oft eats her meals in parking lots. She has seen her girl and grandchildren only once in the past six months, and her husband not at all.
Su Min, a 56-year-old retiree from Henan province in central Mainland china, has never been happier. "I've been a married woman, a female parent and a grandmother," Su said. "I came out this fourth dimension to detect myself."
After fulfilling her family'southward expectations of dutiful Chinese womanhood, Su is embracing a new identity: fearless route-tripper and internet sensation. For six months, she has been on a solo drive beyond China, documenting her journeying for more than 1.35 million followers across several social media platforms.
Her main appeal is not the scenic vistas she captures, although those are plentiful. It is the intimate revelations she mixes in with them, most her abusive union, dissatisfaction with domestic life and newfound freedom. Her blunt but vulnerable demeanour has made Su – a onetime manufactory worker with a high school education – an adventitious feminist icon of a sort rarely seen in Red china.
Older women send her messages about how painfully familiar her story feels and greet her at each destination bearing fruit and home-cooked meals. For younger women, she is a font of advice about marriage and kid-rearing. "I wish my mother could be like Auntie Su and live for herself, instead of being trapped and locked in past life," read a comment on i of her videos.
Her unexpected popularity speaks to the collision of ii major forces in Chinese society: the rapid spread of the cyberspace and a flourishing awareness of gender equality in a country where traditional gender roles are still deeply rooted, especially amongst older generations.
"Before, I thought I was the only person in the earth who wasn't happy," Su said in an interview from inside her beige tent. She was leaving tropical Hainan, China'due south southernmost province, headed for Guilin, a city famed for its lush hills, about 500 miles away.
Only later sharing her videos online, she said, "did I realize at that place were and then many people similar me."
Before last fall, Su had rarely travelled. But she had long been enamoured with the idea of driving. Growing up in Tibet, she sometimes missed the schoolhouse bus habitation and had to walk 12 miles through the mountains, she said. Each time a truck passed by, she imagined sitting behind the wheel, safe and comfortable. But cars were rare, and having one seemed impossible.
At 18, she moved to Henan and worked in a fertilizer factory. Five years later, she married her husband. They had met only a few times – not uncommon at the time – but she thought marriage might exist a mode out of the countless chores she shouldered at home.
Instead, she said, she establish herself laden with fifty-fifty more housework, too every bit verbal and concrete corruption. Her husband would disappear for long stretches and then hitting her if she asked where he had been, she said; once, he shell her with a broom.
Still, Su said, she never considered leaving, worried about a social stigma that is still pervasive in much of China.
She resigned herself to her life at home. Her girl gave birth to twins in 2017, and Su was in charge of watching them – a task that she was happy to practice, merely that kept her tied to her home. Although age had cooled her husband'south temper, they barely spoke. When they did, they argued.
She sought solace in novels about time-travel and romantic Korean soap operas but still felt deeply lonely. During especially heated arguments with her hubby, she would faint, she said. A medico somewhen told her she had depression.
Then, in late 2019, she came across a video online of someone introducing their camping gear while on a solo road trip. She remembered her childhood dream of driving – the freedom and comfort information technology had represented.
Over the post-obit months, she devoured every video she could find about route trips. She took copious notes: which apps they used to find campsites, which tricks they had for saving money. (Showers at public bathhouses, she learned, could exist bought in bulk).
Before long, she made up her listen: Once her grandsons entered preschool, she would embark on a trip of her own. She had bought a pocket-size white Volkswagen hatchback several years before, with her savings and a monthly pension of around Us$300 (S$402).
Her family unit was resistant. Su reassured her daughter that she would be prophylactic. She ignored her hubby, who she said mocked her.
On Sep 24, she fixed her tent to the top of the car, packed a mini-fridge and rice cooker, and set off from her habitation in the city of Zhengzhou.
She posted video updates every bit she collection, and in October, one of them went viral on Douyin, the Chinese TikTok. In it, she described how oppressed she had felt by housework and her hubby.
"Why do I want to accept a road trip?" she sighed. "Life at home is truly too upsetting."
Millions watched the video, sharing information technology with hashtags like "runaway wife."
Su continued across the country, visiting historical 11'an, mountainous Sichuan and the old boondocks of Lijiang – roofing more than 8,500 miles and then far. She saved on highway tolls by taking country routes. At dark, she unfolded her tent atop her motorcar like an accordion, feeling safer up high. Before setting out again each morning, she draped her wet towel on a clothesline strung across the back seat.
In her videos, she marvelled at her new-found freedom. She could bulldoze as fast equally she wanted, brake as hard as she liked. At each stop, she made friends, she said. Wrapping dumplings on camera in a Hainan parking lot in February, she laughed when tourists passing by asked who was travelling with her.
"I dearest eating hot peppers, only my family doesn't like them, and then I had to make myself not eat peppers," she said in an interview. "At present after coming out, I can swallow peppers every day."
She has sometimes encountered hostility. One time, she said, a man asked how she could air her family unit'south private affairs and said he would vanquish her if they ever met in person. She replied, "Good thing I haven't met yous."
Su's daughter, Du Xiaoyang, who visited her in Hainan terminal month, said her mother was a new person.
"Anything she wants to do, she just does, whereas earlier she seemed agape of everything," Du said.
In March, Internet-a-Porter, the luxury shopping website, featured Su in an advert for International Women'southward Day.
Nonetheless, Su blushes when asked about her new fame. She also says she is non notwithstanding qualified to merits the mantle of feminist. "It took me so many years to realize that I had to alive for myself."
She paused: "It'due south something I'm waking up to, not something that I just am."
There are limits to what she is willing to change. Although she is determined to movement out if her hubby continues to treat her badly, she says she doesn't want a divorce, knowing that her daughter would feel obliged to care for him if she left.
But she tries non to dwell upon that eventual homecoming. First, she plans to comprehend all of China. That could accept a few years.
"Now that I've finally come out, now that I desire to go out backside that life, I need fourth dimension to let it melt away," she said. "There are many things that, as time passes, may have an outcome you never imagined."
By Joy Dong and Vivian Wang © The New York Times
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/travel/chinese-woman-solo-road-trip-china-feminist-icon-246571
0 Response to "A Chinese 'auntie’ went on a solo road trip and now she’s a feminist icon"
Post a Comment