Spring Grass, just like her namesake, has grown to be hardy and resilient, even defying authority at times to stand her ground. In the past, her rebellion was limited to talking back to her mother or taking a hand warmer for herself instead of giving it to her brother. In chapters twenty and twenty-one of Spring Grass, Spring Grass commits her most defiant act yet, as she performs adultery with Big Brother Lowe, whilst being married to Rivers Ho. Her transgression stands out against her hard-working, diligent character. But beyond her infidelity, what makes Spring Grass’s actions so transgressive? Spring Grass’s relationship to sex is a complex one that involves the societal pressures she has faced in relation to her self-worth, her own marriage to Rivers, and her perception of her basic needs. Without attempting to make a moral judgment of Spring Grass, I argue that her adultery marks various shifts within her expectations and lived experiences regarding her sexuality.
Given her upbringing, it comes to no surprise that Spring Grass suffers from low self-worth and self-esteem, and sex, in turn, has challenged these notions by serving as an alternative manifestation of her value. Although Spring Grass has been constantly recognized for her work ethic in the past, she must be aware that the clock is ticking — she is approaching her thirties, she is married, and she has children. Gaetano states, “for most migrant women workers, continuing employment after marriage is anyway difficult because employers favored young and single women workers, and routinely dismissed pregnant workers who might otherwise negatively impact productivity or profit, demanding maternity leave or special benefits” (101). While Spring Grass is largely self-employed, for women whose whole lives have been dictated by the worth of their labor, their desirability in the labor market is bound to be heavily ingrained in their self-worth. Spring Grass, thus, does not need judgment from an employer or manager to feel that she is losing value in the economy over time. Beyond productive labor, however, women are also tasked with the burdens of reproductive labor. As Spring Grass becomes older, not only does her material output as a worker decrease, but she will be unable to fulfill the reproductive responsibilities of a woman. As long as Chinese culture continues to associate women’s self worth with both types of labor, Spring Grass’s self-worth is perpetually at odds against time.
On the other hand, she experiences an inverse relationship with her value through sex. To Big Brother Lowe, “[Spring Grass] just sincerely wanted to repay his favor. What else could she use to repay him, apart from her own body?” (Qiu, Chapter 21, 12). In comparison to Big Brother Lowe’s educated, urban identity, Spring Grass sees herself as reduced to a nobody with nothing to offer from her rural upbringing and lack of education. However, Spring Grass interprets sex as a universal tool that she is able to wield when she has nothing else. Because of the expectation within Chinese culture to properly express gratitude and give gifts, sex is Spring Grass’s way of showing thanks. As much as sex becomes the only resource that Spring Grass can fall back on, however, internally, she still experiences insecurity about sex, perhaps through understanding that her sexual desirability is one that is also fleeting through time. This is visible when her impulse reaction toward Big Brother Lowe’s initial refusal was self-doubt over her looks. Although we see that other aspects of her identity intersect in the realm of sex, as she worries that her countryside origin would impact her desirability, Spring Grass’s innate fear is that her sexuality is also in limbo.
Although her interaction with Big Brother Lowe wasn’t her first time Spring Grass was, in one way or another, exploited for sex, these chapters mark a prominent shift in which Spring Grass goes from a passive to an active participant in sex. In the past, when she was sexually harassed by her uncle and Robbie, Spring Grass internalized her sexual service as an expected duty of her, which resulted in her offering sex to Big Brother Lowe. However, her sexual act with Big Brother Lowe is different — she feels accomplished: “That a city man like big brother Lowe, a man who had gone to college, would take a fancy to her, really proved that she was someone out of the ordinary”. In contrast to her past activities, perhaps Spring Grass felt a sense of ownership over Big Brother Lowe after he succumbs to her. In a sense, sex has become an act of empowerment and agency here, after having lived her whole life under the ownership of her parents, Rivers, and Rivers’s parents. Spring Grass also feels inferior to Big Brother Lowe given her background, so a man like Big Brother Lowe appears to be unattainable. Thus, her ability to have sex with him challenges her inferiority and provides new doors of opportunity for Spring Grass. Unlike her past occurrences, she is the first to initiate here and take control. In addition, sex is evidently empowering for Spring Grass even after the act itself — following this incident, she develops the courage to confront Rivers and Phoebe, his employer, at the restaurant. As a character who is largely non-confrontational, this is a striking development where she is able to stand up for herself.
Big Brother Lowe also starkly contrasts Rivers in his background and character, which suggests that Spring Grass’s infidelity is a projection of the frustrations she feels toward her marriage. Spring Grass believes that she married Rivers out of love, but a key element of this story is that Spring Grass fell in love with the idea of a college-educated, city-boy Rivers. Big Brother Lowe is a manifestation of the type of man Spring Grass would actually develop feelings for, in opposition to the reality of Rivers. “If Rivers Ho had made it into college and gone into the city, would he have become a man like brother Lowe?” (Qiu, Chapter 21, 13). Internally, Spring Grass may have justified her adultery by viewing Big Brother Lowe as an alternative-universe, idealized version of Rivers. Thus, she is provided “the chance to imagine different futures that could be achieved through making a better match than would be available in the countryside” (Gaetano, 112). However, it can also be argued that Spring Grass’s values have changed as she navigates adulthood, such that she prioritizes financial stability now over educational prowess. Even under such criteria, though, Big Brother Lowe remains more of a desirable partner as he has demonstrated his ability to support her financially. Looking past the various ways in which Rivers pales as a husband in comparison to Big Brother Lowe, he is an unsupportive husband that demands more care from Spring Grass than he provides, further building distance between the married couple.
The role of care in Spring Grass’s life is thus a complex one that leads to a consideration of her fundamental needs. In the past, Spring Grass has always understood financial stability to be the primary need of her life: “all she needed was to see the number in her savings booklet grow larger to feel like her toiling and her sorrow were being compensated” (Qiu, Chapter 21, 1). Thus, she puts her all into her labor to satiate this need. However, we know that financial stability is not the fundamental need of a human being’s survival, given models like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and we are reminded of this when Spring Grass falls ill. At the end of the day, there is no use for Spring Grass to accumulate all of this money when she is unable to enjoy it for herself. Her sickness, then, brings her attention toward the basic needs that come before financial stability. As Big Brother Lowe takes care of her, Spring Grass realizes what it is like to have the basic, primal, bodily needs to be satisfied. Even though he only takes care of her sickness, Spring Grass’s need for genuine intimacy, sex, and pleasure becomes “unlocked” at this point. This is demonstrated by her dream of a man’s hand (Qiu, Chapter 20, 13). The hand caressing her face appears to be the starting point where Big Brother Lowe takes care of her health, and the transition toward her body suggests Spring Grass’s recognition of her desire for sexual pleasure. The fact that Spring Grass’s first thought of the hand belonging to Big Brother Lowe comes to show that only he is capable of providing such care and pleasure for her.
Spring Grass’s experience bathing at Big Brother Lowe’s house exemplifies her interactions with care in the context of sex. In the past, Spring Grass has always only been able to clean herself in the muddy waters used by her entire family. Bathing, as well as Big Brother Lowe’s invitations to come bathe in his home, symbolizes a novel process of purification and cleanliness. Through bathing, Spring Grass is able to wash away, even for a moment, the idea that the only way to survive is through toiling in the trenches. This provision of purification provides an interesting justification to her actions that follow. Spring Grass’s decision to express gratitude through sex may be considered a subconscious pursuit to satisfy her other bodily need for sexual pleasure. Putting the moral consequences of adultery aside, her sexual act may be considered to be not something filthy or tainting this newfound cleanliness, but another form of purity that serves to cleanse and ground Spring Grass in her corporeal needs. Interestingly, she still fails to extract herself from her responsibility to serve others, as this act is simultaneously driven by her bodily needs as well as her gratitude toward Big Brother Lowe.
Rivers’s acts of infidelity in his workplace leave little to be questioned, in contrast to Spring Grass’s contending with her sexuality. Her understanding of sex as a gift or a commodity to represent her value suggests the larger dependencies between Chinese women’s self-worth and their expectations to take up both productive and reproductive labor. Additionally, given Spring Grass’s positionality along the axes of geographic residence, education, and income, sex is an act that allows her to transcend these socioeconomic barriers and assert power and control. Her invitation to Big Brother Lowe thus marks a turning point in which Spring Grass takes greater agency over her body and her bodily needs while grappling with the realities of her marriage. This sexual act thus brings into question the dynamics posed by Spring Grass’s feelings of inferiority in the larger structures dictating her upbringing.