China’s ‘road trip auntie’ is ready for a new milestone – divorce

BEIJING – In the four years since she began driving solo across China, leaving behind an abusive marriage and longstanding expectations about women’s duties at home, Ms Su Min, 60, has become an internet sensation known as the “road-trip auntie”.

She has driven to the foot of Mount Everest and camped on the beach in the tropical province of Hainan. She has been featured in an ad campaign about female empowerment and inspired a forthcoming movie starring a famous Chinese actress.

But one key step in Ms Su’s emancipation eluded her: She wavered on whether to file for divorce, worried about how it would affect her family.

Until now. In July, Ms Su officially began divorce proceedings.

Her decision, she said, is a testament to how much she has learnt to commit to her own happiness, and to the self-confidence she has gained on the road.

But her experience in trying to end the marriage also shows the many barriers to independence that Chinese women still face.

Ms Su’s husband at first refused to divorce, and a legal fight loomed. Judges in contested divorce cases often deny petitions or force couples into mediation that disadvantages the woman, studies show, and they frequently ignore claims of domestic violence.

It was only when Ms Su agreed to pay her husband more than US$22,000 (S$29,000) that he gave in, she said.

“It’s all I have – how could I not be upset?” Ms Su said in an interview several days after negotiating the agreement. She was parked near the city of Guiyang in south-western China, where she had recently toured a sculpture park nestled among green hills.

Still, she said, “even though money is very important, freedom is more important”.

Ms Su began vlogging after she set out from her home in Zhengzhou, a city in central China, in September 2020. In between shots of turquoise lakes and rolling fields, she explained why she, a retired factory worker with a high school education, had finally struck out on her own.

She was tired of living for others, bearing her husband’s demands and shouldering housework. For decades, she had believed that was just how life was for women, but now she was finally ready for a change.

To her surprise, her videos went viral. Women across the country said they saw themselves or their mothers in her story and cheered her on as she rewrote it.

But even as Ms Su became an accidental icon of women’s awakening, she said that she did not want a divorce. She worried that the responsibility of caring for her husband would fall on her daughter if she left him.

Divorce also still carried a stigma among older generations, and Ms Su’s mother opposed it.

Gradually, though, Ms Su began to reconsider. After her husband realised she was making money off her vlogs, he asked her for money, she said – and she worried that could continue if she did not extricate herself.

Her daughter urged Ms Su to put herself first, telling her, “You’ve given so much to our family.”

“Every time I talk about this, I want to cry,” Ms Su said.

Still, deciding to divorce was only the first step.

Chinese law recognises domestic violence as grounds for one-sided divorce, and Ms Su tried to make her case. She filmed an argument between herself and her husband, where he admitted to having hit her in the past (and also demanded US$70,000 to agree to a divorce). But a lawyer told her that she would need more evidence, such as hospital records.

Even when there is ample evidence, judges rarely rule that domestic violence has occurred, said Ms Ke Li, a professor at the City University of New York who has studied divorce in China.

“Courts still try so hard to protect the integrity of marriage as opposed to women’s rights,” Ms Li said, because the government sees marriage as a foundation for social stability.

If Ms Su could not count on a finding of domestic violence, she wanted to avoid going to court because a judge would likely then order her to split her assets with her husband, including the rights to her social media accounts. That would mean sharing with him the very platform that had given her the confidence to walk away in the first place.

Ms Su refused.

“What saved me was not only myself, but the consistent support and company of my fans on this account,” she said in a video announcing her plans to divorce. “This is the thing I’m most proud of in my life. I can’t give it to him.”

After negotiations, her husband agreed to divorce without going to court for US$22,000.

In August, Ms Su is at home in Zhengzhou to finalise the paperwork.

But she is already planning her next destination. She has never been abroad and is eager to see Switzerland and Paris.

“Once this paperwork is done, I can go any time.” NYTIMES