Fate And Struggles-Shaofen And Her Daughters’ Fate

Shaofen is an ordinary peasant born in Guiping County before China’s liberation. In the arrangements of the matchmaker and her parents, she married the third son of the family Lu in neighboring Shuixiu village. She was industrious and lived in harmony with her husband. In the circumstances of the big family’s remembers being growing, and the couple’s ability to run a home independently being still lacking, her husband’s big brother suddenly built the big family. Shaofen and his husband only got two daughters so they had no right to take the family’s common savings and property. The living of this small family became very difficult. In order to have sons, who can carry on the family’s last name, Shaofen gave birth to11children,10of them daughters and only one son. But her son later died and so did one of her daughters. The fact that they had no son gave the family a lot of pressure, so her husband was low emotionally and died of illness at a very young age. Shaofen and her eight unmarried daughters had to live alone in the world. Without a male at home, widowed Shaofen and her daughters couldn’t get any care in the village. Instead, she was discriminated as "a woman who couldn’t give birth to a male child"Under such pressure, this peasant woman could only interpret what happened to her as "fate". But she also believed that life depended on fate, luck, and feng-shui. She expected to change her fate through feng-shui, which could create a distinguished one to help the whole family. After her fifth daughter became the first female college student in the village and bid farewell to the life of farming, she bet the fate of the family on finding a feng-shui cemetery for her dead husband, which is said can create a civilian official for the whole family. Her three small daughters did not abuse their mother’s expectations, entered the university continuously, and were assigned to work in the county after graduation. She believed it is the feng-shui of her husband’s cemetery that helped her daughters admitted by the university. So she found herself a cemetery in Beacon Hill with a significant feng-shui, hoping to continue to bless their children and grandchildren in the future.Her daughters flow from the countryside to the county and get rid of the farmer’s identity. In different eras and classes of the society, her daughters live tremendous different lives with their mother with regard to some significant events in life, such as getting married, bringing birth and family life. Shaofen’s knowledge and understanding for "feng-shui" has also changed. As an all female family, Shaofen changed her grandson-in-law’s family name to her husband’, Lu, which means that her grandson-in-law is her husband’s grandson nominally. When Shaofen become old, her daughters took her to the town from Shui Xiu village. As they lived far away from the village, their relationship with their gens relatives turned more alienated. Shaofen became a totally "town folk" in their gens relatives’ eyes. According to her wishes, her daughters buried her in the Beacon Hill cemetery after her death.As an ordinary rural woman, in order to get psychological comfort to live, she attributed her sufferings to "fate". She chose to believe "Feng Shui" in the face of making a big future plan, but in reality, she took "changing the destiny of farmer" as her goal, looking for ways out. At the same time, she invested on her daughter’s education prior to other people in the village; she changed her husband’s cemetery to "Feng Shui cemetery", which displayed her deviation from the traditional of "no population flow" in rural areas. It is the frustrations in life that promoted Shaofen to seek for opportunities outside the village. Her actions influenced her daughters who later get the first opportunity when the door of social mobility in China is opened and become the a few people who achieve the goal of moving upward through such channels, thus changed the fate of the whole family.This paper is not a detailed investigation in Shaofen and her daughters’ lives, but research on their life courses from the feminist’s perspective. By analyzing the important events in Shaofen and her daughters’lives, combing with the rural social history being taken into consideration, the paper reflected the life and circumstances changes of Shaofen and other ten women within their family, as well as their different response to the life and circumstances changes in their lives. The paper finds out the real strategies in action level taking by Shaofen and her daughters from their belief in "fate" and "Feng Shui". The paper also reveals the actual living conditions and limited opportunities faced with the females in the rural areas. Meanwhile, the paper also reflects how people are connected with their contemporaries and the people of different generations, and how the past things influence the current and future relationships.