Polishing the rough edges By Ma Guihua (China Daily)

Updated: 2010-04-08 09:57

A group of women receive training at Youlan Women's Institution

on how to wear silk scarfs. Photos Provided to China Daily

Are the nation's professionally successful women coarse and lacking in manners? Ma Guihua of China Features takes a closer look

As more Chinese women join the workforce, and society moves toward greater affluence, the nouveau riche seem to be making a loud statement about their wealth.

It is not rare to see expensively-dressed women carrying Louis Vuitton handbags, talking loudly in public, littering, or jumping queues.

"Chinese women used to be known for being temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. But not anymore," says Zhang Lehua, an etiquette trainer and director of the Youlan Women's Institution.

She says some seemingly successful women have become an embarrassment with their spitting, taking phone calls at a concert, and tasteless dressing.

In the seven years since the privately-funded Youlan institution was established, Zhang has been coaching women in social etiquette, table manners, and in building a confident image.

The week-long courses, offered every two months, are limited to 20 people and cost 15,000 yuan ($2,205) per person. In addition, there are salon activities devoted to music and poetry appreciation, character analysis, color combinations, and tea ceremonies. To date, Youlan has drawn some 700 members.

"All my members have come of their own accord. We run no advertisements. It's simply word of mouth," says Zhang, who graduated as an MD from Beijing's Capital Medical University and later completed a doctorate in pathology at the New Jersey Medical School, the United States, where she lived for over a decade.

The members are mostly entrepreneurs in their 30s. "They are quite successful in business, but realize they are missing out on other aspects of life."

Dr Zhang Lehua, director of the Youlan Women's Institute and co-initiator of the China Women's Continuing Education Fund.

Statistics show that 41 percent of private businesses in China are managed by women, while 28 percent of the executives at State- or collectively-owned companies are female.

Since New China was founded in 1949, women have made great strides in the pursuit of gender equality. The bonded feet, a twisted aesthetic imposed by men in a feudal society has died out, and Chinese women are indeed "propping up half the sky" as Chairman Mao Zedong had urged, eschewing clothes and accessories as "petty bourgeois" indulgences.

But as the country began to open to the outside world in the late 1970s, women were inevitably exposed to the world of fashion and other new ideas.

Now, international fashion magazines such as Vogue, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and Bazaar all have Chinese-language editions.

Last July, the World Luxury Association announced that China had overtaken the United States as the second largest market for luxury goods worldwide, despite the global financial crisis.

Ernst & Young has predicted that by 2015 the total purchasing power of China's single women and those married without children will reach $260 billion, up from $180 billion in 2005.

"However, the pursuit of beauty has not been accompanied by refined manners. It's a shame that when our forefathers overthrew the last dynasty, the profound culture and graceful etiquette passed on for thousands of years, were also cast away," says Dr Zhang, a popular speaker on women and etiquette, who has held more than 100 training sessions in the past five years for banks, businesses and government organizations.

According to Zhang, this has much to do with the social and educational system that puts a big emphasis on women's professional skills, but not as much on their finer aesthetic qualities.

"Life's essentials, like manners and etiquette, are critical to a nation's overall quality, and therefore should be inculcated at an early age," she says.

The China Women's Continuing Education Fund that Zhang and a few others launched on the eve of the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, is designed to draw like-minded entrepreneurs to sponsor talks-for-change by the country's top-notch public speakers for women.

Participants act out etiquette in taking the bus.

"The reason we want to work with women is not that men are any better or immune from bad manners, but that their poor habits are hard to change, whereas changes among motivated women can work wonders and impact generations," Zhang says.

The China Guanghua Science and Technology Foundation, a public foundation that sponsors projects ranging from farmers' reading rooms and environment-friendly energy, to the elimination of poverty and innovation in science, has also partnered the women's fund.

Zha Delong, Guanghua's deputy secretary general, says: "As China steps up the pace of urbanization, more women are moving to cities and want to work their way up the social ladder. To find their footing and succeed, they need to constantly recharge their batteries to keep up with the ever-shifting social and professional landscape."

Zhang Aojia (stage name Shadow), a feminist dubbed China's "Queen of Musicals", is all for this program on women's education.

"It's high time we tended to our spiritual home and invested in cultural consumption, be it books, concert or art collections, before we turn vulgar and coarse," says the graduate of the Chicago College of Performing Arts.

Since 2005, Tsinghua University in Beijing has been running advanced leadership courses for women executives with "annual disposable incomes of 500,000 yuan ($73,500)". The 35-day courses cost 36,800 yuan ($5,294), and remain in steady demand.

"About 80 percent of the courses are on enterprise management and development, with the rest, dealing with image, public communications, and family-career balance," says a man surnamed Li at the admission office.

Some critics say such expensive training is actually aimed at cashing in on women's wealth and vanity and serves no real purpose. But many others, like Lin Hua, an expert on women and family issues, thinks otherwise.

She believes that wealth in the hands of women, especially wise women, will go farther than in men's hands.

As Xu Xiaoyin, professor of economics at Fudan University in Shanghai, puts it: "Nowadays 'women propping up half the sky' should not be interpreted simply as an emancipation of labor. It demonstrates, rather, the impact of women's wisdom on society."