No Longer Exploitative : China’s New Status Sign: Having Maid

PEKING — Zhu Jianyun’s baby girl was born only last October, but Zhu returned to her job in the Peking offices of the Communist Youth League even before her 100-day maternity leave expired--thanks to a 17-year-old maid imported from the Chinese countryside.

The maid, Zhang Li, is a peasant girl who had never before been away from her farming community in east-central China’s Henan province. She spends her days feeding and singing to the baby while Zhu and her husband, a surgeon doing graduate work, pursue their careers.

“The complete work of taking care of the child is on her (Zhang’s) shoulders now,” Zhu, 29, said not long ago in an interview.

Zhang is one of tens of thousands of women from rural areas who have come to Peking over the past few years to do household chores and take care of the young, the sick and the elderly.

Now a Status Symbol

At the height of China’s Cultural Revolution, in the late 1960s, the employment of domestic help would have been denounced as a form of exploitation. Now, having a maid is a status symbol among urban Chinese.

In this respect, the People’s Republic is beginning to follow the lead of Hong Kong, where for the past decade, more affluent Chinese families have been importing Philippine women to look after children and household chores.

Last year, about 23,000 Filipinas signed contracts to do domestic service in Hong Kong, and the money they earn and send home has become an important source of foreign exchange for the Philippine government. Now, some Hong Kong companies are seeking permission to import Cantonese-speaking women from China’s Guangdong province to work as maids--an idea that raises a number of sensitive questions for the Chinese and British governments.

Inside China, the spreading phenomenon of the baomu, or housekeeper, is given impetus by a number of social forces.

Eager to See City

Young women in rural areas are curious to see a bit of life in the city, and the improved efficiency and reforms of Chinese agriculture have made their hands less necessary in the rice paddies.

Zou Shaofeng, a 20-year-old baomu from Mao Tse-tung’s home province of Hunan, was asked recently why she had come to Peking, and she replied, sadly, “I was surplus labor.”

In the cities, the demand for maids has increased because of the improved standard of living--and because of the increasing difficulty in keeping together the extended family network of aunts, cousins and grandparents that in the past would have been relied upon to look after the young, the aged and the disabled.

Zhu, the Youth League worker, recalled: “At first, when she (Zhang) came, some of the neighbors told us, ‘You both have parents. Why don’t the grandparents take care of the child?’ But our parents are intellectuals. They are trying to write something and do research. Now, after a few months, the neighbors don’t comment so much about the baomu any more.”

The arrival of the maids, welcome though it is, has presented city dwellers with a whole new set of social problems. Some thefts have been reported. Peking officials say one maid “took all the valuables away” from the home of a well-known composer, Gu Jianfeng. The authorities acknowledge that there have been isolated cases of kidnaping and baby-selling.

Chinese newspapers also now publish some Dear Abby-type letters from married women who fear that their husbands have developed a romantic interest in the baomu.

“When he buys movie tickets, he always buys three and we all go together,” a woman named Liu Fen wrote last month to the Workers’ Daily. “After dinner, they’re always talking and laughing.” The writer was advised to “open up lines of communication” with her husband.

A newly married Peking couple complained recently that they had been enjoying unheard-of privacy in a spare apartment turned over to them by their parents--until they were obliged to share the place with a baomu, who had been hired to care for an aging grandparent at a nearby hospital and had nowhere else to sleep.

Three Was a Crowd

“The apartment was fine for two but not for three,” the couple lamented.

According to a Chinese source, the maids in an apartment building inhabited by high-ranking Chinese government officials recently joined together, in a kind of labor union, to put pressure on their employers.

“They asked for higher salaries and for better conditions,” the source said.

Apparently the maids’ most sought-after benefit is a television set.

“Some of the girls ask whether the family they will live with has a TV,” a Peking resident said. “If you have one, they’ll come work for you. If not, they won’t.”

Other amenities prized by the baomu include hot running water and an inside toilet. Not all households in Peking can provide such luxuries, particularly those living in the capital’s aging courtyard houses, some of which date from the Ming Dynasty; thus, the maids prefer to work for families in new, high-rise apartment buildings.

The demand for maids is so strong that it has touched off cut-throat competition between private and state-run organizations that serve as go-betweens.

Run by Rural ‘Gangs’

Peking officials say that until two years ago, the market in maids was dominated by private, underground “gangs” from rural areas run by older women who, for a fee, would supply peasant girls to city homes.

“An old woman, the gang leader, would be on hand in the city to send young girls from their hometown to the city families asking for them,” Zhao Jiu, a Peking city official, said. “The young girls were very afraid of these old women. Once they got a salary, they would have to pay a large portion of it to the old women.”

Another official described the system more graphically. “It was like the Mafia,” he said, “and these old women were the dons.”

Most of the Peking maids supplied in this way come from Anhui province, a relatively poor rural area in eastern China that historically has had trouble feeding its people. Chinese historians say the local records show that in times of drought or other natural disasters, county leaders in Anhui would encourage some of the population to leave the land and look for work in the cities.

Peking officials now acknowledge that even in its revolutionary days, the Chinese Communist Party helped perpetuate this practice.

Origins in War Years

“In the war years, before liberation, many of these rural counties served as base areas for the Communist Party and the army,” Zhao, the Peking city official, said. “Some of the older cadres took women from these places into their homes. After the war, some of the people from the base areas came with the cadres to Peking. These people preferred to work for the cadres in their homes rather than live with them as guests.”

Two years ago, in an attempt to drive the private gangs out of business, the Peking Women’s Federation set up its own state-run agency, the March 8 Domestic Service General Co. (March 8 is observed as Women’s Day in China and in many socialist countries.) The state-run company supplied maids for 15,000 Peking households last year, including those of such high-level officials as Vice Premier Li Peng.

But the private operations are still flourishing. At free markets in at least three different Peking locations, middlemen--more often middlewomen--offer to supply maids from the countryside, for a fee, to city families who need them.

Every day, the train arriving in Peking from Anhui disgorges young women looking for work as maids. They are often greeted by older women from their hometowns eager to look after them--and to get a fee for their services.

Quick Deals Possible

Although the private maid market presents some opportunity for abuse and exploitation, city officials acknowledge that it also has some advantages.

“The convenience is that you can make a deal on the spot,” said Zhao, who manages the March 8 company. “They can provide maids freely and quickly. If you come to us, you have to wait. We have to check out papers and get approval from various units. Our advantage is that we can provide maids who are reliable and do so in an organized way.”

The families hiring the maids generally pay them 30 to 35 yuan a month, about $9 to $11, plus room and board. The pay is sometimes slightly higher for women who must care for the elderly or for sick or disabled persons. But this is what the Chinese pay; foreigners in China must pay at least 10 times as much.

Officials estimate that about 70% of all the baomu are hired to look after young children. According to figures kept by the Peking Women’s Federation, most of the maids coming to Peking are themselves very young. About 54% are under the age of 18, and 37% between 18 and 25.

State-run women’s federations have also set up maid-finding services in China’s other major cities. The Canton Women’s Federation, for example, reportedly has a waiting list of 2,000 families waiting to be assigned household help from rural Guangdong.

Hong Kong Wary

Hong Kong is also beginning to cast an eye on Guangdong, for maids from there not only speak Cantonese but know how to cook Cantonese dishes. So far, however, the use of Chinese maids in Hong Kong is officially forbidden.

The British government apparently fears that allowing the importation of Chinese maids would present immigration and security problems. Hong Kong families with relatives in Guangdong might register them as maids in order to get them out. And Chinese authorities may be reluctant to encourage a labor market that underscores the comparative wealth of capitalist Hong Kong.

But the exodus of young women from rural areas to the cities will continue. Last September, Zou Shaofeng, the girl from Hunan, saw a letter sent to her town by the county leader, aimed at recruiting women to go to Peking and work as maids.

Zou, who had never before ventured farther than the provincial capital of Changsha, signed up, borrowing 60 yuan, about $19, to pay the county leader for her travel expenses. Soon afterward, she boarded the overnight train to Peking, where she was assigned to take care of an ailing, 96-year-old woman.

“I was very afraid,” she told a reporter. “I didn’t tell my mother what I was going to do. I just told her I was going to Peking. My mother knew she couldn’t do anything about it, so she wept.”