A writer at BBC documented her journey after giving birth to her Chinese-English son in England. Being half-Scottish herself, her experience with the Chinese “superstitions” in dealing with a woman’s body after child birthing has brought her surprises.
When my mom visited after Bryan’s birth, she also softly imposed (she said they were just “suggestions” ) some of very same “superstitions” on Grace during the first month immediately following birth giving. Grace thinks most of those “rule” were just what they are, superstitions. But upon talking to Chinese women from an older generation, almost everyone swears by the importance of following those practices, including wearing socks at all times, close take hot showers with windows closed (even in summer), avoid drinking cold drinks… etc. They swear that the reason Westerners age so rapidly after giving birth is because they don’t take care of their bodies.
According to traditional medical practices, a woman’s body is at her weakest having lost all her Chi (“life force”, or “energy” ) to the child birthing process. With all her pressure ponits opened (they had to be opened to allow the birthing process to go smoothly), the woman’s body is most vunerable to “bad energy”… Thus the need to keep the woman’s body all wrapped up to protect those pressure points.
Like the author of the BBC article, Grace also suffered some consequences from not following a couple of the strict rules. My conclusion is, what my mom said may be superstitions, but they’ve been around for thousands of years, and there’s a good reason why generations after generations of women obey those practices religiously. Simply ignoring the tradition is to ignore thousands of years of collective wisdom, even if that means there’s no immediate scientific proof for any of those things yet.
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