Stories From Communist China - Why My Father Named Me "A Small Celebration" Rather than "A Big Celebration"

I would like to introduce Steemit to the strongest, most loving woman I know - my mother. She grew up in Communist China in a culture that did not value females, and wrote about her experience being born the third daughter of her parents. My mom, Xiaoqing Cai, has various stories from her childhood that are foreign to many Westerners. She grew up in the 60’s and her father was a middle-ranking Communist Party members. Yet, like most of China, they lived in poverty and intense government control. Here is the story she shared with me about her name:

My mother, two aunts, grandfather, and their nanny

My mother, age 4

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For some reason, I refused to be born into this world until three weeks after the due date. If I had known that my very birth would be a disappointment to my father and an embarrassment to my mother, I would have stayed longer in my mother’s womb.

I was actually a beautiful baby with a pair of big, inquisitive eyes. My only misfortune was that I was a baby girl instead of a baby boy. Having had two daughters already, my parents, especially my father, wanted a son desperately. So, when he learned that he had another daughter, he was disappointed and felt he was in bad luck. My mother, on the other hand, suffered from physical, psychological and emotional pain because of my birth - for it was believed in China that it was a woman’s fault and incompetence if she couldn’t give birth to boys. My mother felt ashamed and embarrassed, and she became moody and sensitive to what my father said and did. Although I believe my father never said anything directly to blame my mother, yet anytime he said or did anything which showed his inconsideration to my mother’s feelings, she would blow up or cry bitterly.

My parents are not a very understanding or loving couple. That they married was not because they truly understood or loved each other, although they thought they did when they married. Not long after their marriage, they started fighting and arguing constantly about almost everything, important or trivial. I had always wondered what brought them together until one day my mother told me that she was very disappointed with her marriage, and that she had married my father because he was an intelligent young man with ambition and a promising future. My father never told me why he married my mother. But I guess the reason was that my mother was very pretty and naive at that time. It seems to me that they have nothing in common except their children. My birth did not help bring them closer. Instead, what happened soon after I was born worsened their relationship and left both of them with permanent scars.

One day, after my parents finished one of many quarrels, my mother cried as she told me what happened when I was born: My mother stayed in the hospital for four days. On the third day, she asked my father to dry her overcoat on a stove because she had poured some water on the sleeve, but my father told her to wait because he had a movie ticket, and he had to go soon. She felt so hurt and angry that she threw the overcoat right in his face in front of several other patients.

My father gave me a name the first week after I was born - Xiao Qing, meaning “Small Celebration”. Later when I was about six, I remember he told me half-jokingly one day that if I were a boy, my name would have been Da Qing, meaning “Big Celebration”. At hearing this, I felt more regretful than hurt. I was sorry for both my father and myself. I wished I were a boy so my father would be happier and I would be loved more by him.

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My grandmother and my two aunts

My grandmother