Thoughts on March 8 (Simplified Chinese characters: 《三八节有感》) was written in 1942 by Ding Ling, wherein she discusses her thoughts on politics and the role of women in China in the context of March 8, Women's Day. The essay was originally published in Liberation Daily (解放日报 - jiěfàng rìbào), a newspaper that Ding Ling edited.Linfang Qin, 丁玲的最后37年 (Beijing, ROC: Zhongguo wen shi chu ban she (中国文史出版社), 2005), 299.Goldman, Merle. Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977, 298. She understood the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) policies surrounding women's rights to be inconsistent and insufficient.Ling Ding, Tani E. Barlow, and Gary J. Bjorge, I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1989), pp. 316. Ding Ling further criticizes the double standard between men and women surrounding social issues such as divorce, abortion, and remaining unmarried. She invites women to strengthen themselves against the oppression that they face, as well as advocating for the CCP to act on liberating women through creating a discussion on the topic as well as monitoring their own "moral conduct."
The essay garnered much negative attention from within the CCP, thus forcing Ding Ling to rescind her statements. Her statements were part of the reason behind Mao Zedong's policies discussed in his Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and the Arts.
Historical context As a member of the May Fourth Movement generation of writers, Ding Ling's evolution in writing reflected her transition from Republican to Socialist China.Ling Ding, Tani E. Barlow, and Gary J. Bjorge, I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1989), pp. 2. By the time she wrote Thoughts on March 8, Ding Ling's writing demonstrated both the untenability of Western Feminism and the struggles that Chinese women faced at that time, as, despite her beginnings as an author writing feminist fiction, her writings, ultimately, strayed from fundamental feminist elements.Ling Ding, Tani E. Barlow, and Gary J. Bjorge, I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1989), pp. 1.
Meanwhile, the importance of writers in the CCP was promoted once the party began the Yan'an Communism experiment in the late 1930s.Ling Ding, Tani E. Barlow, and Gary J. Bjorge, I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1989), pp. 7. Due to this, the CCP aimed to attract prominent writers - primarily May Fourth literati - and make them submissive to the Party. Some scholars attribute the claims that Ding Ling penned in Thoughts on March 8 as being directly in response to a conflict surrounding the collaboration between May Fourth literati and the CCP. The CCP was in the midst of deciding whether they should recruit the literati as an association of writers that would disperse propaganda (especially to counter opposition from the right, who accused the CCP of oppressing literati and literature), or whether they should harness the writers’ power to sway the educated but unpolitical youths.
Liberation Daily soon published critical essays (杂文 - záwén), whose topics included Party leadership, their public actions, and the morals of the population.Charles J. Alber, Embracing the Lie: Ding Ling and the Politics of Literature in the People's Republic of China (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2004), pp. 278. In addition to this, Ding Ling's involvement in China's Executive Committee of the Congress to celebrate International Women's Day (March 1939), Association for the Promotion of Women's Constitutional Rights (1940), and in the selection of the Model Women of the Border Region as a representative of the China Writers Association (1940) prefaced Ding Ling's eventual penning of the critical Thoughts on March 8, a piece which some scholars see as demonstrating her upholding her morals and perspectives.Charles J. Alber, “The New Democracy,” in Enduring the Revolution: Ding Ling and the Politics of Literature in Guomindang China (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), pp. 143.
Finally, Thoughts on March 8 also reflects May Fourth Feminism, as it reinterpreted the discussion surrounding feminine responsibilities amidst a “revolutionary world,”Ling Ding, Tani E. Barlow, and Gary J. Bjorge, I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1989), pp. 9. through its examination of women's rights through the lenses of “universal suffrage, legal rights, and equal access to the public domain.”Ling Ding, Tani E. Barlow, and Gary J. Bjorge, I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1989), pp. 12.
Summary Ding Ling prefaces her essay by emphasizing that the women of Yan’an and other areas under Communist control have better lives than Chinese women elsewhere.Wang, Xiaoping. Contending for the "Chinese Modern": the Writing of Fiction in the Great Transformative Epoch of Modern China, 1937-1949. Boston, MA: Brill, 2019, pp. 544.Yi-Tsi Mei Feuerwerker, “In Quest of the Writer Ding Ling,” Feminist Studies 10, no. 1 (1984), , pp.73. However, she does put the onus on the CCP, saying: “It would be better if there were less empty theorizing and more talk about real problems, so that theory and practice would not be divorced, and better if all CCP members were more responsible for their own moral conduct.”Ling Ding, Tani E. Barlow, and Gary J. Bjorge, “Thoughts on March 8,” in I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1989), pp. 319. Furthermore, Ding Ling critiques the CCP's opinion that the women of Yan'an are completely free. She notes that women in Yan'an are compelled to marry and have children while also having Party obligations and a revolutionary mindset. Similarly, Ding Ling notes that women are condemned for not wanting children, as, in society, having children was an inevitable part of marriage. With this in mind, Ding Ling demonstrates that all women - even those who prioritize raising their children, as they were obligated to as a wife - are, ultimately, confined to an identity of "backwardness."
Ding Ling credits her ability to tell the truth - a skill she adopted due to her “revolutionary credentials, her life as a Communist, and her gender” - as to why she gives herself the role as being the spokesperson for all women. Some scholars, such as Alber, read Ding Ling as being the protagonist of her essay, as it represents her own socio-political perspectives on women and women's rights.Charles J. Alber, Embracing the Lie: Ding Ling and the Politics of Literature in the People's Republic of China (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2004), pp. 212.
Ding Ling covers topics surrounding Chinese women's liberation. Firstly, she analyzes the category of woman as an “essential entity,” as the characteristics often correlated with femininity such as “irrationality, willfulness, regret, romanticism, and love of illusion” are not necessarily negative; women are criticized no matter what they do, whether they act virtuously or not and are oppressed despite their equal rights in name, so the negativity surrounding these traits is primarily due to their association with femininity.Goldman, Merle. Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977, 299. The examples Ding Ling evokes to support her thesis that women are not afforded the same rights as men include the right to remain unmarried,Charles J. Alber, “The New Democracy,” in Enduring the Revolution: Ding Ling and the Politics of Literature in Guomindang China (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), pp.144. the right to abortions, and the right to divorce.Ling Ding, Tani E. Barlow, and Gary J. Bjorge, “Thoughts on March 8,” in I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1989), pp. 318. In regard to women's right to divorce, Ding Ling asserts that it is more often the husband who desires it, as, if a woman were to seek divorce, “she must be leading an immoral life, and then of course she deserves to be cursed.” Ding Ling also creates a dichotomy between Chinese "old society" and modern society. She notes that, in the "old society," women would have been "pitied and considered unfortunate," but, in modern society, women are blamed for their "backward" decisions. As such, Ding Ling posits that the double standard between males and females on the question of morality in the modern era is in favour of the male, causing detriment to the women's reputation because she was “equal and had choices”, and, therefore, brought her fate onto herself.
Finally, Ding Ling notes that "people without ability" are weak, which is why she ends her essay with four-fold life advice for the reader to follow in order to strengthen themselves. Firstly, it was necessary to not fall ill; Ding Ling opines that it is vital that a woman takes care of her health, rather than embarking on a "wild life", which can jeopardize one's health.Ling Ding, Tani E. Barlow, and Gary J. Bjorge, “Thoughts on March 8,” in I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1989), pp. 320. Furthermore, it was important to ensure one's happiness, as it gave one's life meaning and puts one in the position to help others. Thirdly, one must consistently use one's brain in order to determine the validity and correctness of one's ideas and decisions, and whether they conform to one's morals. Finally, “resolution in hardship” and “perseverance to the end” was necessary, as people who are collective-minded rather than individualistic are able to benefit the world and “persevere to the end.”
Ding Ling's solution to this situation is a communal one (as some scholars, such as Feng, note, “applying the Marxist interpretation of the relationship between the individual and society”Feng, Jin. New Woman in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2004, pp. 192.), as both men and women must band together through their shared desire to improve their social environment. However, Ding Ling also notes that women must not wait to be saved, but must “first strengthen themselves” instead of “issue[ing] a call for women's passive submission to the Party as their saviour.” Furthermore, Ding Ling asserts that women must break free of anything that stands in the way of their liberation, even if that includes the CCP. Women should initially align their interests alongside Party pillars, but women may “have no alternative but to define themselves against the set parameters of theory, against the current line.” As such, Ding Ling renders women a “social and political category just as ‘proletariat’ is”, therefore positioning the category of "women" as a “legitimate point of theoretical struggle.”
Finally, Ding Ling laments how women's ideas are not taken seriously. In a postscript to the essay, Ding Ling says that the ideas she has penned in this essay will be criticized solely because she is a woman, so her essay was written with likeminded people in mind as her audience.Ling Ding, Tani E. Barlow, and Gary J. Bjorge, “Thoughts on March 8,” in I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1989), pp. 321. Indeed, she posits that, her ideas, if spoken by "a leader before a big audience," would "evoke satisfaction," therefore demonstrating the notion of the double standard between men and women that is discussed throughout her essay.
Reception and cultural impact