Is the sentence "women in the north are not people, and the door in the south is not a door" demeaning?

China has a history of 5,000 years, and has also created a long Chinese culture, which is extensive and profound. Among them, proverbs, as a vein of traditional culture, are summarized by ordinary people through their own life experiences, some are descriptions of folk life, and some are reflections on life. Because it is easy to understand and catchy, it is widely circulated among the people. Many proverbs also contain profound truth, for example, the older generation of farmers said that "women in the north are not people, but in the south." Next, let's take a look.

Women in the north are certainly not people. The people here are not real people, but the status of women is relatively low. In ancient society, men were superior to women, and women "listened to their fathers at home and married their husbands". This system makes women have no place in the family. No matter big or small, women basically have no right to decide, and they are all decided by the man who is the head of the family. Besides, they can't engage in social activities, and they have to teach each other at home. In fact, this phenomenon existed all over the country at that time, but why did the status of women in the north become lower?

This is because in ancient times, the north was the political center, so the rule of imperial power was more severe, and the most important standard of imperial power was the three cardinal guides and five permanents put forward by Neo-Confucianism in the Song Dynasty, with the monarch as the minister, the father as the son and the husband as the wife. It is precisely because rulers attach importance to orthodox ethics that clans also play an important role in maintaining the grass-roots rule of feudal society. In ancient agricultural production, men were an important labor force, and clan-based affairs also required the clan to pay more attention to men and regard them as the basis of clan inheritance. The restrictions on women in the north are more severe.

Women need to stay at home, take care of their parents-in-law and take care of their affairs. There is no right to associate with others, even if there are guests at home, women can't eat with them, and so on. Women can't even sit at a table with guests, let alone talk to them. So there is such a phenomenon. If there is no man at home, only a woman is at home, and someone happens to visit, the woman will answer that there is no one at home and the guest will visit again another day. Over time, there is a saying that "northern women are not people".

The south door is not a door, so why isn't the south door a door? Many friends in the south are puzzled by this proverb. In fact, this door does not refer to the front door and door of our house in the general sense, but to the back door of ancient people's homes. There were many rivers in the south in ancient times, so every household was built along the river. When people build houses, they will have a front door and a back door. The front door is used to greet their distinguished guests, and the back door is mainly used to pile up sundries. Then a small ditch was opened near the back door. People wash clothes and hang clothes here. Generally, people from their own families come to this place. Others may not know the existence of this place, so it is relatively secret, unless people close to their own families know about the guests.

But looking at this sentence now, this back door is often associated with what we call "going through the back door". Generally, people who can go through the back door are connected, and it is not a glorious thing to go through the back door, so people who go through the back door to achieve their goals will not tell others that they are going through the back door. In this way, no one knows the existence of the back door. This phenomenon is very similar to the phenomenon that ancient people had a back door at home.

Bian Xiao has something to say: Bian Xiao read a question on the Internet before, which province in China has a higher status of women. Someone answered Sichuan and Northeast China, explaining that this is because both provinces are big immigrant provinces. Historically, Sichuanese migrated from Hubei and Hunan provinces, while the three northeastern provinces were mostly Shandong and Hebei people who went to Kanto in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and they were also immigrant provinces. Why do women in immigrant provinces have a high status? This is also related to ancient ethics. Immigrants are out of the original clan control, and the restrictions of clan ethics on women are weakened. When these men and women live in a new place, people are more likely to have equal relationships.

Provinces with low status of women are often influenced by clan forces, such as Shandong in the north, Guangdong in the south, Chaoshan people and Hakkas in Guangdong. Although they are immigrants, the whole clan moved together, so the status of women is not that high.