Every now and then I read a story which makes me take notice. I have to say that the story of Wang Lei, a 38 year-old Chinese-American woman is one such story. It is the story of how a bookish young woman became only the eighth person in the world to climb the highest highest mountain peaks on all seven continents.
Wang was born in Jiangsu province in China, and went to the USA in her twenties. Anyone who has spent a lot of time in East Asia will probably tell you that the Chinese are generally not particularly physical people. In the modern age, those in cities have little connection to nature, and most spend their time working, eating, sleeping, or attached to electronic media of some sort. I have mentioned that in Hong Kong, a large percentage of children never touch grass or trees before they reach the age of five. The internet has become particularly addictive to a culture which seems almost disembodied, at its most extreme.
While Chinese women can be quite assertive around the home (I speak from experience – my wife is Chinese!), they are generally expected to be quiet and obedient in social situations, at work, and in educational settings. This is particularly true of younger women. I often think that the Japanese cartoon figure Hello Kitty, is an expression of a social stereotype of East Asian women – small, cute, lovely, and to top it off, she has no mouth. In other words, she should be seen and not heard.
She's so lovely!
It must be noted that Chinese women are generally far more assertive than Japanese women. Mao Ze Dong once famously stated that women hold up half the sky, and believed that women should be an active part of Chinese society (mostly to slave away in factories, but let’s not quibble). This created more social space for women to express themselves than in some other Asian societies.
It seems that Wang was not much different from the quiet Asian woman stereotype. She was a self-described bookworm, and when she first went to live in Boston she was very scared to walk even one block to the subway, because she was terrified of the cold weather. What’s more, her life appeared to be a product of what I call the “money and machines” society - she worked in “IT and finance”. She had no experience with athletics or outdoor adventure activities whatsoever.
It is thus seemingly incredible that she just recently became the first Asian American to climb the “Seven Summits”, the highest mountain peaks on all seven continents. She completed the final hurdle last week, finally scaling Mount Everest. Incredibly, she also achieved her ambition to hike to the North and South Poles.
