China's 'Kingdom of women'

Witness History

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, History

4.5 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2021

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Mosuo community in China’s Himalayan foothills is matrilineal, so a family’s ‘bloodline’, inheritance and power is passed down through the female side. There is no such thing as marriage and monogamy is actively discouraged. The women rule and the men don’t mind. Rebecca Kesby has been speaking to Choo Wai Hong, a Singaporean corporate lawyer who came across the community as she travelled through her ancestral homeland of China. She liked it so much she learnt the language and built a house there. (PHOTO: Mosuo Women. Credit Patrick AVENTURIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
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0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds.
0:29.2	Hello and welcome to this witness history podcast from the BBC World Service
0:38.1	with me Rebecca Kessby. Today a glimpse into the life of one of the oldest matrilineal communities in the world,
0:46.0	a land where women hold all the power and where monogamy is actively discouraged.
0:52.0	Keep an open mind as we head for the misty foothills of the
0:55.2	Himalayas in southwest China and one Singaporean's life-changing adventure into the so-called
1:01.6	Kingdom of women.
1:03.0	The women are strong.
1:05.0	You go into this community and you see women with a degree of confidence that we don't see in our world.
1:11.0	You know, it's natural, it comes to that man these are
1:13.4	farmers who are not very well educated but gosh they lose confidence you know as
1:19.2	people the women this is Chu Huai Hong. Until 2006, she was a top corporate lawyer based in Singapore.
1:27.0	The rural life of the Musau community in China's mountainous Yunnan province was a world away from her own fast-paced executive
1:36.2	lifestyle.
1:37.2	But when Wai Hong took early retirement, in order to travel around China the nation of her
	...

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