“Hooligan Sparrow”- Has Ye Haiyan come to the End of 15 Years of Feminist Struggle?


Parwana
16. 04. 2020
English translation proofread: 
Angela Bainter and Bella Peacock 


Prominent Grassroots Feminist Pleading for Escape


On March 27, 2020 a once applauded Chinese feminist activist Ye Haiyan(@liumangyan), posted a series of Tweets sobbing, and pleading for help. In videos, she says the local government of Inner Mongolia has harassed and threated her for months. She implores thousands of her followers overseas (including high-profile people like Ai Wei Wei) to save her life in limbo. She could no longer stand the pressure from the government.[1]

Ye Haiyan says a woman official with the surname Liu threatened to demolish the yurt she built for a small guesthouse, and Ms. Liu warned that all her words on social media WeChat and Weibo are watched by the government, she will face expulsion and legal penalty if they find out any of her inappropriate remarks. Ye Haiyan gasps between words, her tears keep rolling down while she sobs that all her money and energy has been invested in building the yurts; the loss of them would be unbearable since these are now her main livelihood.

To continue living in China, Ye Haiyan hasn’t published politically sensitive articles online for years. Despite that, she feels increasingly helpless living in the shadow of a harsh political crackdown which seems to have no end. By emphasizing the intention of all her engagement, Ye Haiyan said she’s really upset by periodical evictions and obscure accusations which claim her behavior is against government regulations. Everything she has done is based on her love for the country and responsibilities as a citizen.

Today, Ye Haiyan’s 15 years of work has been slowly whittled away, reduced to sniggers. Her story encapsulates a larger more ominous turn – a slow and steady quashing of radical dissident voices across China until they are little more than hallow echoes.

The predicament Ye Haiyan exclaimed on Twitter doesn’t sound unfamiliar. The majority of Chinese social activists have experienced similar or even crueler suppression from the authoritarian government. The question is why such a prominent figure among the most important modern Chinese grassroots feminists is now reduced to crying and begging for help in front of the camera over internet?

Background: Alleged Women’s Emancipation since the Mao Era

There’s a big misunderstanding that China has already fully emancipated women back in the Mao era. That is not true. The socialist revolution simply subsumed women under the nationalist political agenda. Mao’s policy was enforced in response to the urgent requirement for increased labor to support mass production; it served to exploit and oppress women more than it empowered them. [2] A woman must play the role of an industry worker in the factory like a man while suppressing her own interests and desires while simultaneously fulfilling many other traditional roles – a beautiful, thrifty and chaste wife, wonderful cook, a loving and gentle mother, and an obedient caring daughter-in-law. It’s not an exaggeration; this ‘‘perfect woman’’ ideal is exactly what the Chinese state still propagates to people to this very day.

The state’s women’s organization “Fulian”(All-China Women’s Federation), founded in 1949, dominates women’s political discourse entirely in China, but it represents neither women’s interests nor protects them from harm and inequality. “Fulian” has never announced their working agenda to the public; in reality it functions just like a state mouthpiece. It is actually grassroots NGOs who are campaigning for women; some also work with international NGOs, however many of them were clamped down on in 2015.

The emergence of “Hooligan Sparrow” – On Body, Dignity and Sexuality of Marginalized Social Groups

If you ask people in China who still remember the name Ye Haiyan(叶海燕), don’t be astonished by their sneers towards her sagged boobs and chubby body – this is most of what survives about her on the Chinese internet now. People laugh and say it is ridiculous that she, an uneducated worker from the country, exposed her “ugly” naked body in the name of activism. Some say she must have learned that from western feminists, and that she is a copycat, a sad clown.

Ye Haiyan was born in a small village in Hubei Province; after graduating from middle school she moved to the city looking for a better life. Back in 2005, a set of naked photos posted on a popular internet forum “TianYa” with the alias “Hooligan Sparrow” from Ye Haiyan went viral. Ye Haiyan declared ownership of her own body by bodly showing her imperfect curves and desires to the public - demanding freedom for women to enjoy sexual pleasure the as same as men. The forum post sparked much uproar on the Chinese internet; the netizens who were barely exposed to any western feminist thinking at the time were literally petrified; Ye Haiyan became famous overnight.

Although her fame on the internet seems at most of the time notorious, Ye Haiyan still proudly identified herself as one of the “marginalized persons”. She set up a small NGO called “Chinese Folk-feminist Studio”, with the mission to engage in public service work for vulnerable social groups between 2007 and 2013. Notable projects include, the project for helping HIV infected people, advocating legalization of prostitution, etc.

During that time a number of women writers like Mu Zimei and Lin Bai also started emerging from the internet, they drew a wide attention from the Chinese literary world with their sentimental style and themes centered on sexuality and the female self-consciousness. Hence, the bottom-up Chinese feminist movement paved its way by leading the process of self-consciousness awakening through the network of internet, and stimulating the public discourse on feminism.  It gradually proved its place in Chinese society.

Debatable Critics on Chinese Social Media until 2013

Riding the wave of internet fame, Ye Haiyan remained active on the internet. She often challenged orthodox societal values, and started cyber-fights with people who were ignorant to feminism or harbored prejudices against women. In two of her best-known articles “I Surely Want Men, and I’ll Take the ‘Purity Memorial’ Too”(《爷,男人我肯定要,牌坊我也拿走了!》2006) and “The Biggest Resistance to Chinese Feminism is Women”(《中国女权的最大的阻力是女人》2009), she fiercely denounced two types of women, “Traditional Pugs” (传统哈巴狗) and “Modern Hot Chicks” (现代辣子鸡) who she considered to be obstacles to the development of Feminism. The first term indicates women who yearn for love and approval from men, and over-indulgently work to please men; the latter stands for younger and even well-educated modern women who exchange their youth and beauty for luxurious material enjoyments from men.

Unfortunately the audacious ‘‘Body Strategy’’ and the blatant speeches of Ye Haiyan are apparently a crazy idea in a country which still puts male superiority and traditional values and morality on a pedestal. Instead of receiving support from people, her social media engagement was demeaned by the public; many humiliated her and cursed her like a pest. However, Ye Haiyan didn’t give up, and despite harsh public criticism, she opened a ‘‘10RMB-Shop’’ in the Guangxi Province in 2011, providing ‘‘affordable’’ prostitution for migrant workers, and hoping to promote a better understanding of sex workers and needs of migrant workers on the bottom rung of society. In an interview with Phoenix New Media(凤凰网) in 2012, she rebuked the slurs by saying that she didn’t need recognition from netizens, because she has confidence in her own values, ‘‘If they say prostitution is a disgraceful deed, I would say those whose job is to fawn over others are more disgraceful’’, she continued.

A year later, Ye Haiyan rose again to the center of attention on social media by leading collective action against child sexual abuse and corrupt school officials. The highly debated protest with protesters jointly holding a board titled ‘‘Headmaster, Get a Hotel Room with Me, Spare the Children!’’, ignited anger and all other possible emotions on the internet. Afterwards, a masked mob attacked her workplace and home, forcing her to take self-defense with her daughter. The police sentenced her to 13 days in a detention center for ‘‘suspicion of deliberately harming others’’, and yet didn’t pressed any charges against the mob.

Support from International Feminist Communities

In contrast to the domestic reactions, Ye Haiyan’s feminist pursuits received widespread recognitions and support from overseas, artist like Ai Weiwei,[3] and numerous western media outlets including the BBC, New York Times. In 2016, a documentary film ‘‘Hooligan Sparrow’’ based on Ye Haiyan and her activist struggles made it to many international film festivals, such as Sundance[4]. The film won the IDA Documentary Award, and was shortlisted for the 2017 Academy Award for best documentary feature.[5]

The unrelenting efforts Ye Haiyan spurred the re-shaping women’s self-consciousness and opposition to social inequality, which earned her an undeniable role in China’s feminist and civil rights movement. Her name appears in almost all modern Chinese feminist movement chronicles. Her work, especially her social media engagement is widely discussed and quoted among many prominent feminist scholars in and outside China, including: Wang Zheng, Professor of Women's Studies and History from University of Michigan, Leta Hong Fincher, an American journalist and a scholar who specializes in Gender Studies, and Zeng Jinyan, a scholar, writer and human rights activist. In 2016 Zeng Jinyan wrote about Ye Haiyan in her book “Feminism and Genesis of the Citizen Intelligentsia in China”, she commended Ye Haiyan as a “unique social activist”, and “a daughter of farmer, who taught herself to become a civil storyteller, and mastered a particular competence of language which challenges the discourse of knowledge production”. [6]

However by searching the name Ye Haiyan in Google now, you will only find outdated articles about her. Her life seems to have stopped around 2017.

No Home and No Future

Since 2010 the electricity and water in Ye Haiyan’s home and office have been frequently shut off, and she has also been the target of numerous anonymous threats and violence. After staging the protest against child abuse in 2013, she carried alleged “bad records”, and was evicted multiple times, which resulted in her being displaced for three years.[7] Living under constant government surveillance and suppression has left Ye Haiyan feeling that she cannot do anything anymore. She has been beaten down, and has kept a low profile since then.

In 2019, after wandering between many cities in China, in the hope of finding some peace away from the harassment and attacks, Ye Haiyan and her family finally settled down in a remote grasslands region(Xilamuren) of inner Mongolia. They rented a small yurt and renovated it into a simple guesthouse, trying to make a living between hosting travelers and selling some paintings and articles.

Ye Haiyan’s dream to be the first “female grassroots political representative” has come to nothing after years of struggle and suffering. She doesn’t dare publish sensitive articles or piercing comments anymore. The protest actions and performance art she used to manage have now become history. However the government is not satisfied with this, the local police never cease their periodical surveillance and interrogations. She can no longer move about freely, and her passport has been confiscated too.

Outcast Civil Rights Activists from China

Grassroots social activists like Ye Haiyan face acute survival issues over the years. At the beginning of 2015 Chinese authorities started to take severe systematic measures against civil rights groups and activists. Along with many arrests and crackdowns, news and activities from Chinese feminist movement have slowly vanished. The control over all domestic and international NGOs indicates that human rights activism has lost its ground in mainland China. No more protests or collective actions can be put forward, social and civil rights efforts have all fallen into stagnation. Massive tracking, detention and secret arrest of social activists, protesters and dissidents at all levels have also become an open secret. After supporting the Feminist Five”(女权五姐妹) in 2015 and initiating the #MeToo campaign in 2018, Chinese feminist NGO Feminist Voices”(女权之声) and many others were forced to close. The few remaining feminist and social rights voices in Chinese society also have become more and more feeble since their stands and opinions are being marginalized. 

The iron hand of the state utilizes traditional media as well as social media to paralyze the development of the civil society, and endangers the survival of human rights activists to a great extent. Their speech only survives merely hours among a small group on social media. Advanced ideologies like Freedom of Speech, Human Equality, and Democracy can hardly find their soil to grow.  What is even more disappointing is that because of the collaboration formed by the didactic state media, influential celebrities and social media influencers, systematic smears frequently discredits social activists and their engagements. As a result, the majority of people refuse to recognize social activism and its efforts, which distances it from the very groups that these efforts are trying to reach. Under these circumstances, how can a civil rights movement which has neither a mass foundation nor policy support survive?

However, perhaps one day the political environment in China will change, some independent media groups and individuals are now trying to adopt a discreet approach to work around politically sensitive themes, while waiting for the opportunity to come; they concentrate on building up networks, and patiently cultivating sober and independent thinking communities. Yet it is impossible for Ye Haiyan, and many others like her who had already achieved notoriety in China, to go back to a quiet and anonymous normal life; their names are on the black list of the government; they are closely monitored, and their every single move is watched. Ye Haiyan finds herself on the verge of survival, the idea of continuing her activism (even discreetly) is out of the question.

From Unforgettable to Forgotten

After all the fame has faded away, Ye Haiyan is paying a heavy price for being special and independent under the authoritarian regime. Things have actually become more difficult as time passes. Yet the contributions she made for women and marginalized groups had only a minor impact on Chinese society, her aspirations and sacrifices have been gradually forgotten. Just like how she mocked herself on social media, that she is still leading a life like a “wild dog”.

After enduring 15 years feminist struggle, today she is vulnerable and helpless. Even though she has voluntarily withdrawn from public view, the idea of being free from surveillance and leading a normal life in China seems like an unattainable dream. Now she can only beg through Twitter for help and shelter from a distance, but perhaps her tears and grey hair can convey more than her words can express.

As of the completion of this article on April 16th, there have been no further updates from Ye Haiyan on Twitter since the day she posted her S.O.S video on March 27th.





[1] Twitter叶海燕 @liumangyan https://twitter.com/liumangyan/status/1243416978540249094
[2] Invention and Intervention: The Making of a Female Tradition in Modern Chinese Literature, Lydia H. Liu DOI:10.1525/california/9780520211032.003.0006
[3] 知名女学者拍半裸照声援叶海燕https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/china/2013/05/130531_aixiaoming_protest
[4] Hooligan Sparrow, Sundance Institute https://www.sundance.org/projects/hooligan-sparrow
[5] 纪录片《流氓燕》:一个女人和她的中国 https://cn.nytimes.com/china/20160722/hooligan-sparrow-ye-haiyan-review/
[6] 《中国女权公民知识分子的诞生》曾金燕- City University of HK Press, 2016. ISBN9629372665, 9789629372668
[7] 两会前严打 叶海燕再被搬迁 https://p.dw.com/p/2Yj1w

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