“What’s it to you if I use my uterus or not?”

The actress Qin Lan, who is best known for her role in the wildly popular TV drama "Story of Yanxi Palace", said this in an interview:

“People have been asking me why I’m not getting married, and some have even suggested it’s ‘irresponsible’ if I don’t have a baby. I think it’s strange. “What’s it to you if I use my uterus or not?”

That line went viral, garnering its own hashtag on Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter).

The 38-year-old actress’s remarks struck a chord with many women, who struggle to deal with conservative values in a rapidly modernizing Chinese society. Chinese women who are single beyond their 20s continue to be derided as shèngnǚ 剩女 (lit., "leftover woman") — unwanted and therefore seemingly of lower value.

Source (with modifications)

[trending] #QinLan on marriage & childbirth, “Some say not getting married is not wanting to take responsibility, but getting married for the sake of it is what’s irresponsible, no? Others say giving birth is a woman’s duty, but how is it your business if I use my uterus or not?” pic.twitter.com/DuoZCQEAos

— cdrama tweets (@dramapotatoe) July 14, 2020

Here's the way Qin Lan said the viral line in Mandarin:

Wǒ de zǐgōng shǐ bu shǐyòng, guān nǐ shénme shì

我的子宫使不使用, 关你什么事？

That rather threw the online machine translators for a loop:

GT:  "My uterus is not used, it's your business."

Baidu Fanyi:  "What's your business if my uterus doesn't work?"

Microsoft Translator (Bing):  "My uterus makes no use, shuts you up."

I tried to help them out by rewording the question so as to be more transparent, but that didn't help much either:

Wǒ de zǐgōng shǐ bu shǐyòng gēn nǐ yǒu shé me shì

我的子宫使不使用跟你有什么事？

Google Translate comes out on top in this trial:

GT:  "What does it matter to you if my womb is not used?"

Baidu Fanyi: "What's wrong with my uterus?"

Microsoft Translator (Bing):  "What's the matter with you that my uterus doesn't use?"

In my research for this post, I learned a new word:  hystera, which is simply the Greek word for uterus.  I instinctively and instantly knew that, since I was familiar with the derived word "hysterectomy ("surgical excision of the uterus").

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014

It was not so easy for me to see the connection with "hysteria", but there certainly is one:

The word hysteria originates from the Greek word “uterus,” hystera. The oldest record of hysteria dates back to 1900 B.C. when Egyptians recorded behavioral abnormalities in adult women on medical papyrus. The Egyptians attributed the behavioral disturbances to a wandering uterus—thus later dubbing the condition hysteria. To treat hysteria Egyptian doctors prescribed various medications. For example, doctors put strong smelling substances on the patients’ vulvas to encourage the uterus to return to its proper position. Another tactic was to smell or swallow unsavory herbs to encourage the uterus to flee back to the lower part of the female’s stomach.

Wikipedia

If we follow the shifting conceptions of hysteria from the Greeks to the Romans, and thence between the fifth and thirteenth centuries, when the the increasing influence of Christianity in the Latin West altered medical and public understanding of this presumed pathology, we see an evolution of strange theories about its etiology and consequences.  During the medieval and Renaissance periods, treatment options varied greatly, including exorcism to rid the victim of satanic possession.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, physicians and scholars strove to view hysteria as a medical condition.  Increasingly, hysteria was viewed as a neurological, psychological, mental, and emotional complex.  Most amazingly, it even came to be applied to males, who lack a physical uterus.

After a gradual decline in diagnoses and reports, in 1980 hysteria was removed from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which had included hysteria as a mental disorder from its second publication in 1968.

All things considered, Qin Lan's viral question makes a lot of sense.

 

Selected readings

• "Chinese terms of address for single ladies" (8/6/12)
• "The transcription of the name 'China' in Chinese characters" (6/17/12)
• Weibo post (7/15/20 10:57)

 

[h.t. Stefan Krasowski]