When I Was in Xia Village

4 ideas

1. Zhen Zhen returns diseased to Xia Village

   Zhen Zhen, a teenage girl, is captured by Japanese troops, forced into sexual servitude, and then sent back among them by Communist guerrillas to gather intelligence. She comes home with venereal disease to a village that gossips about her as a 'Japanese whore', while her parents press her to marry Xia Dabao, the poor suitor she had once been denied. At the end she refuses the marriage and everyone's pity, and chooses to leave for Yan'an for medical treatment and study.

2. A woman's body is spent twice

   The revolutionary cause treats a woman's sexual violation as usable, turning her captivity into an intelligence asset. The community she served then judges that same body by traditional chastity norms and finds it spoiled. The collective takes the benefit of her sacrifice, and she alone carries the stigma, so the ideology's promise of women's liberation does not survive contact with its own practice.

3. Pity as a disguised form of contempt

   Pity puts its object in the permanent position of the damaged party. It lets the person who pities feel generous while still ranking the victim below them. Zhen Zhen rejects both the marriage offered out of compassion and the villagers' sighs, because accepting them would fix her identity around her violation. Her refusal is how she reclaims the right to define herself by what she does next.

4. Moral status gained by comparing against victims

   Neighbours, especially other women, use a violated woman as a baseline that makes them feel pure. They gain moral standing without any virtue of their own, simply because 'at least I was not touched by the enemy.' The stigma therefore does social work for the people who spread it, which is why it persists even when everyone knows she was not at fault.

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