The women who never married each other， built a small house together 70 years ago to live out their lives in peace 112

In the village of SHA Tau, Jun'an Town, Shunde, Guangdong, there is a quiet building hidden in a narrow village lane. The three main buildings are in the shape of a 'wishbone', with the words 'Bing-Yu Tang' written on the Southern-style archway at the front.
This is a little-known building, but it represents a very special group of people and a history of women's awakening to independence. In a few years' time, this group of women will have retired forever, leaving this chaste building to tell the story of a past that is difficult for future generations to understand.

I knew about the Bing Yu Tang many years ago and had come to look for it, either because I was in a hurry, or because the navigation was unclear back then, and I couldn't find this building in a deep alley.

In the early morning, the sunlight slants over the pagoda of SHA Tau Village. When you enter this lane, you enter the story of the self-swept woman.

Obviously, after all these years, Bing-Yu Tang is no longer the small building where the self-combed woman lived but has gradually become an attraction.

The walls of the village house outside the Bing Yu Tang are also decorated with the story of the Jisha and local customs.

The main entrance is small and is open from 8:30 am-11:30 am and 2 pm-5 pm. It was not yet open when I visited, and the aunt who cleans the house told me to enter through the side door.

There is a small garden in front of the house, shaded by green trees, with the sunlight falling in the empty and silent garden.

The "Hak Ling Jing-A She" gives the impression that it is a temple, but in fact, it was once inhabited by a group of people who worshipped Buddhism and chanted sutras, but their name was "Self-combed women".

In the old days, women wore their hair up like married women, as a sign that they would never marry and would remain alone for the rest of their lives.

Why didn't they marry or get married, and were willing to die alone in their old age? In fact, behind the self-combing was also a group of women's unyielding struggle against the oppression of feudal rituals.

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, feudal rituals demanded the utmost from women, such as foot-binding, and women were not allowed to study or read, and had a low family and social status.

By the end of the Qing Dynasty, the silk reeling industry in the Pearl River Delta region had developed and young girls were able to earn an income to support themselves, and women began to have the means to live alone without being dependent on men.

With the fear of feudal marriage and the ability to live independently, some women chose to comb themselves, and they had to choose an auspicious day to do so, and through certain rituals, in full view of their friends and relatives, they put their braids into a bun themselves, indicating that they would no longer marry and have children.

Since then, the girl has lived a life of "combing her own hair, cooking her own food, enjoying her own pain and suffering, and raising her own life".

Once combed, the girl could not be forced to marry her parents, nor could she be forced to do so. If she misbehaved in the future, she was forbidden to do so by the villagers and was tortured and beaten, then tied up in a pigsty and drowned in the river.

When a girl died, her parents were not allowed to collect her body and bury her. The girls in the "nun's house" had to dig a hole with a straw mat and a door slab and bury her; if there were no girls in the village to help bury her, she was thrown into the river.

In order to solve the problem of their final home, some of them nominally married a man who had died long ago, commonly known as "marrying a ghost" or "marrying a god", so that their afterlife could be handled in the man's family and his descendants could pay their respects.

There are also those who 'buy the doorway', nominally marrying a man, but not being close to him for the rest of their lives, and paying for a concubine for him so that he can enter the ancestral hall after his death.

Self-combing was actually a voluntary choice in the PRD at the time, and it was common for women in Jun'an, Shunde, not to marry. In this respect, women in the PRD had more autonomy than elsewhere.

There are also women who marry after combing themselves, but they are very few. In the past, when women who combed got married, they were rejected by other sisters and their own sisters stopped seeing each other.

After the outbreak of the war, the silk industry was devastated, and comb women had no choice but to enter the cities or go to the South to earn a living, mostly as maids.

In 1948, the 400 or so daughters who worked in Singapore and the 100 or so daughters who stayed in the village of SHA Tau in Junan decided to build a house and spend the rest of their lives together.

The building is the only one in the Pearl River Delta region that was self-financed by the daughters and has a trace of their activities.

The building is small, with a floor area of 426 square metres, with the Buddha Hall in the middle and two small floors on either side, each with a wooden staircase.

The staircase and the floor on the first floor are both made of wood and have survived the vicissitudes of the past 70 years.

In the 1970s, the number of women returning to their hometowns to comb for themselves increased, and many of them moved into the Bing Yu Tang.

The local government also helped some of the daughters to regain their Chinese nationality, taking into account issues such as medical care and old age.

At its peak, the Bing Yu Tang housed more than 70 people. I estimate that the area of the two sides and the first floor together was only about 200 square metres, and the average area for each person was about 3 square metres.

The life of the women was extremely simple, mostly consisting of a wooden bed, a porcelain pillow, a set of blankets, a wooden cupboard, a wooden table, known as the "go-no-tai", and a few sets of change of clothes.

They spent their long lives in simplicity and silence, doing their daily chores and worshipping the Goddess of Mercy.

Despite a lifetime of hard work, the simplicity of their lives has contributed to their longevity.

However, as time went on, the number of daughters in the Bing-Yu Hall became fewer and fewer, and in 2001, the dozen or so daughters who were still alive made a collective will that the Hall would be given to the SHA Tau Welfare Committee for safekeeping after the sisters' centuries, and would not be demolished.

Today, Bing-Yu Tang is a protected cultural heritage unit in Guangdong Province, and it is likely to become a national key cultural heritage unit in the future, as it is, after all, a very Southern-style building with unique historical significance.

The name of more than 300 women with the surname of Huang from SHA Tau Village was engraved on the main plaque of the left hall during the construction of Bing Yu Tang.

If the red paper is covered, they are still alive; if the red paper is removed, they have passed away.

Most of the surviving ones are old, and it is estimated that in less than ten years, the self-combed women will have retired from history forever.

s the story of the Jisha comes to an end, a silent building remains to hold the voices and smiles of a generation of people.
After visiting the Bing Yu Tang, I travelled 30 kilometres to find a bridge of chaste women, two buildings, two stories of women. The Bridge of the Chaste Maiden, on the other hand, represents a woman's submission to feudal rituals and a lifetime of observing. But the ending of either story is tragic. Needless to say, the chaste maidens, the self-sworn maidens also failed to break out of the constraints of the feudal ritual system after all, and would not hesitate to marry a dead man or pay for a concubine for their nominal husbands in order to have a tablet in the ancestral hall ......
Many people may not be aware of the story of the self-combed woman, nor can they imagine how low the status of women was a hundred years ago, or even a few decades ago. Sometimes I think that there have been many changes and constants in China over the centuries, but there is no need to question that the status of women has changed dramatically over the decades, and we watch this change with delight. I hope that buildings such as the Bing Yu Tang and the Bridge of the Chaste Maiden will never be seen again, let them be a piece of history!