Women Behind the High Gates: I Spent a Lifetime Crossing Over

Rural Emotions + Ensemble of Women + Period Drama + Southwestern Shandong + The Struggle of Human Nature + Women’s Awakening + Family Saga + Intangible Cultural Heritage and Folk Customs

She crossed that threshold, and it took her a lifetime.

The threshold of the Gao family compound is half a foot higher than everyone else’s. Women’s trouser legs wore it down.

Li Zaohua was eighteen when she entered the family. She could read and recite the Book of Songs. Her mother-in-law said, “Women who can read have restless minds, and women with restless minds don’t last long in this compound.”

The three women before her had met their ends: one hanged herself in the mill, one jumped into a well, and one died of illness. Only two characters remained on their ancestral tablets: “So-and-so’s wife.”

Seventy years later, Li Zaohua’s granddaughter stands at the entrance to the compound and asks the same question her grandmother once asked when she was young:

“When will women be allowed to sit at the table?”