Society
Women should cherish their lives: Scholar
By Wu Jiao (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-09 06:57
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BEIJING: If a woman's happiness index includes the four areas of work, marriage, children and parents, few can be happier than Chen Yunying. In addition to academic achievement, she has been blessed with a happy marriage to a powerful man as well as children.
Yet few women probably also share her sorrow over political barriers preventing her from seeing her elderly mother in Taiwan as often as she would like.
After graduating in 1987 with a doctorate in education from George Washington University, Chen is now a well-known expert in special education on the mainland.
She is also in the limelight for being the wife of Justin Lin Yifu, a Taiwan-born, though mainland-nurtured, economist who became the first World Bank chief economist to come from a developing country in 2008.
Chen once joked that she served six roles during the days that she accompanied Lin in Washington, including those of wife, driver and secretary. She also kept up her own career in special education and accepted a post as a guest professor at a university in Washington, DC.
"As a woman, you have to cherish yourself. You have to enrich your thoughts and abilities as time goes by and the world develops. And you should have esteem as a female," Chen told China Daily on Monday on the sidelines of the continuing National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature.
A NPC deputy, Chen also said the role of being the wife of a wise man has brought her happiness and that she is proud of her husband.
Yet the powerful pair have their own sorrow. The stretch of water, which Justin once swam through to reach the mainland, is today an obstacle to any thoughts he has of returning "home".
"I hope I can return one day to sweep the tomb of my father," Lin used to say. While his father has since died, as persona non grata in Taiwan, he was unable to attend the funeral.
It is also difficult for other family members to visit their hometown in Taiwan. Mainland residents are currently only allowed to visit Taiwan with tour groups, which have a tightly-controlled schedule that must be adhered to without going off on their own for side trips.
"I hope there will soon be individual visits across the Straits, so my family can go together," she added, expressing the wish for her son, daughter-in-law, grandson and daughter to make the trip with her.
Chen said she manages to visit Taiwan once a year to see her mother and that her daughter "overcame several obstacles" to go to Taiwan several years ago.
While a heavy workload in the United States kept Lin away from attending the NPC as a deputy, Chen returned to Beijing as a deputy with the Taiwan delegation.
