Talk:Chinese dama

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 10 January 2022 and 18 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Guancong lance li (article contribs).

Capitalised ??

There should be a very good reason for 'Dama' to be capitalised thus. Or if not, we change it to the humble status of a regular noun 'dama'. Onanoff (talk) 12:13, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Theleekycauldron (talk) 21:38, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that the Chinese damas, which literally means "Chinese big mamas", caused China to pass India in becoming the biggest purchaser of gold? Source:
  1. Sim, Shuan (2014-04-01). "China's Unstoppable Gold-Buying 'Aunties' Move Onto Bitcoins". Jing Daily. Archived from the original on 2021-12-30. Retrieved 2021-12-21.

     The article notes: "Eschewing the volatile stock markets, dama prefer the stability of hard assets and the ability to hand wealth down to their children, but their fervor is causing an unintentional side effect—as reported by Want China Times, these eagle-eyed women “have been credited with driving China’s gold market and the 28 percent global fluctuation in gold prices” in 2013. Their buying spree resulted in a 41.4 percent national increase in gold consumption last year, leading China to surpass India as the world’s largest gold consumer."

  2. "Dama". China Internet Information Center. 2013-12-27. Archived from the original on 2021-12-30. Retrieved 2021-12-21.

     The article notes: "Dama, literally means 'big mama,' referring mainly to married women between the age 40-60."

  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Sylvestre Bangui

5x expanded by Cunard (talk). Self-nominated at 10:14, 30 December 2021 (UTC).

• Comment, I'd suggest "... that "big mamas" caused China in becoming the biggest purchaser of gold?" (CC) Tbhotch^™ 03:29, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

• That's a much better hook, thanks Tbhotch (talk · contribs)! I'd make a small change to the hook to this:

  ALT1: ... that big mamas caused China to become the biggest purchaser of gold?

  Cunard (talk) 05:02, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

• ALT2: that the Chinese damas, which literally means "Chinese big mamas", caused China to become the biggest purchaser of gold?

  A more concise version of the original hook that takes into account Andrew Davidson's feedback below about ALT1 about how "big" means "outsize or fat in a western context".

  Cunard (talk) 23:46, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing:
• Neutral: - ?
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Thank you for this very comprehensive article on the dama. In response to the above conversation, I have struck ALT0. ALT1 is fine, and is sourced here and in the article by the same citation.

• I have one puzzle - that DYK Check says that the article is neither new nor recently 5x expanded. However the article history says that just before Cunard started editing on 30 December 2021 the character count was 4628, and that the count today is 34,902. That looks like a satisfactory 5x expansion to me. BlueMoonset please could you check this for me? Have I misread something? Thank you. If the 5x expansion is fine, then this nomination should be good to go. Update: this review is still incomplete; I shall explain shortly. Storye book (talk) 21:54, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

• Storye book, DYKcheck operates on the theory, which doesn't always apply, the articles grow over time. So it checks all the way back to the beginning, even when the article was in Draft or use space, to see its highest prior size, and 5x from there. In fact, it's how big the article was prior to the recent expansion that matters, even if that is smaller than previous high water marks. In this case, as you note, the article started at 4628, which would require an expansion to 23140, and the count is actually 34902, which is a 7.5x expansion, more than enough to qualify for DYK. BlueMoonset (talk) 22:30, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

• Ah, thank you, BlueMoonset. So from now on I'll make sure I always check the article History page for 5x expansions. Storye book (talk) 10:46, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Update: Although my question about length has now been resolved, I have had a re-think about my above review, and I have seen another issue. I shall return shortly and explain. My apologies for any inconvenience caused because I missed something earlier. Storye book (talk) 10:46, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Neutrality

My apologies for hesitating a little while before explaining this re-think. It is a seismic change to my attitude to this article, and I wanted to be sure that I was doing the right thing. I am not one of those who are happy to delete articles or to drastically diminish them, and because I appreciate the great effort that it takes to produce a well-written article, I do not like to heavily criticise a creator's work. Therefore, please be patient with my attitude here. Let's think of it in terms of getting things right, and not of any attempt by me to destroy the article.

I have now realised that the general tone and attitude of the article is one that reflects the kind of misogyny towards older women that Western history has seen hundreds of years ago with the concept of witches, and more recently with the concept that older women who knit are stupid, useless, non-persons, with the skill of knitting itself being diminished in the process. That kind of generalisation is always going to be a lie, and in the case of knitting the critics themselves tend to be those who cannot knit themselves, it being an acquired skill requiring mental skills as well as physical ones. Misogyny (in my opinion) is a process of both unfair generalisation, and of intentional diminishment.

This article is carefully written, and as far as I can see, the creator has made a great effort to be fair, to use authoritative citations, and to cite everything conscientiously. The problem, then, is what has been left out. For example (re China and the Chinese diaspora only, of course) omissions include:

• The percentage and number of the entire Chinese female population who are of middle age.
• The percentage of those women who actually do town-square dancing.
• The percentage of middle-aged town-square dancers who have controlled and turned on loud sound systems which have upset residents in town squares.
• The percentage of middle-aged Chinese females who live in towns, and have enough disposable income to buy gold
• The percentage of rural middle-aged Chinese women who are not in a position to purchase gold, dress and dye their hair like the woman in the picture and do town-square dancing

I think that an examination of the above would reveal that the much discussed dama image represents only a tiny fraction of middle aged Chinese women, and (I'm guessing) represents very few middle-aged women in the Chinese diaspora.

Another way to balance the neutrality of this article would be to look at the percentages of other types of middle-aged Chinese women. For example:

• The percentage of middle-aged Chinese woman who are established businesswomen, including rural farming and village-industry women, women running businesses in towns, and businesswomen among the diaspora. This, I believe, is quite a large percentage. They give a very different picture as far as I am aware, because (at least the ones that I have met) would have used the cheap-gold era to purchase bullion for profit or investment, since most of the cost of gold artefacts is the cost of labour, not the basic cost of the metal. The article makes the damas look stupid for just purchasing gold artefacts as gifts, and anyway most of the artefact purchasing would have benefited the labourers and manufacturers, not the sale of gold itself. True businesswomen and investors purchase bullion, even if they can only purchase tiny bits of bullion.
• The percentage of middle-aged Chinese women who are educated. The damas of this article are not credited with education, but are credited with the activities of uneducated and simple people. I have met many educated, middle-aged Chinese woman (one of them is my neighbour who has a degree from Oxford) and none of them look or behave like the damas in your article.

Now, I am not saying that the dama type does not exist, but the concept of the dama does not come from women who fit the dama type. It comes from outsiders who are not like them, and who are more likely to be men than women, because every Chinese woman is going to be middle-aged eventually and they must be aware of that.

Perhaps the most important point here is that Chinese women of the dama type are not given a voice. There is only one commentator (Teng Wei) hidden away at the bottom of the article which says that "It's ageist, classist — and it's time to stop".

Conclusion: I don't think that I can pass this article for DYK until its neutrality is balanced to the extent that if any middle-aged Chinese intelligent businesswoman were to read the article, they would not feel that all Chinese women of middle age were being generalised as potentially a dama who is potentially some sort of uneducated clown. If you are happy to adjust the article for neutrality, I would be happy to wait until you have completed that task, and to re-assess it. I repeat that the article is beautifully-written, and I can see the excellent work that has gone into it. The problem is just that there is so much missing that it is unbalanced on the side of misogyny.

I must add that all of the above, that I have written today, is my opinion. Should you wish to dismiss me as a reviewer, and request another reviewer, I shall respect that. Storye book (talk) 17:47, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I do not agree that the article "is unbalanced on the side of misogyny". Most of the coverage in the article is neutral or positive towards damas. When I include negative media coverage about damas, I balance it with analysis from scholars who condemn that negative coverage:

1. The "Later meaning: negative connotation" section: "Li cited two extensively reported examples of how the media 'distort[s] the Dama image'. The first story took place in a Beijing street in 2013 when a dama was widely and unfairly criticized for allegedly trying to extort a youthful man who was from another country for making her fall. It turned out that the man had engaged in wrong-way driving and red light running and had exploded in an anger at the dama he had struck who had been obeying traffic laws in crossing the street. The second story took place in a Wuhan subway in 2015 when a dama struck a young woman. Li speculated that individuals refer to the dama with a disdainful and mocking tone since they despise the wealthy and want to protest against wealth inequality."
2. The "Later meaning: negative connotation" section: "Writing in The New York Times, editor Wang Junling said that it was incorrect to stereotype and there is not even a 'clear definition' of what a dama is. Wang wrote, 'The various deeds of the aforementioned damas have no logical connection. As long as middle-aged and elderly women in China do something different, they can be labeled as such.'"
3. The "Square dancing" section: According to Teng Wei, the scholar, the media was exaggerating the dancer conflicts, which builds on the dama lore. She bemoaned that older women who were merely seeking friendship and physical activity were being baselessly cast as "a malignant social force that everyone — even officials — must tiptoe around".
4. The lead and the "Comparison to other subcultures" section: "Reflecting on the double standards, she concluded, "When we use dama as an insult, what we're really doing is suggesting that there's something inherently wrong with being a middle-aged woman. It's ageist, classist — and it's time to stop"

The article includes analysis explaining why the Chinese damas purchased gold (the "Social and economic context for gold purchases" section) and why they are behaving differently from their predecessors (the "Social and economic context" section). Regarding "The article makes the damas look stupid for just purchasing gold artefacts as gifts", these sections explain why the damas purchased gold and make no judgment on whether they "look stupid" for purchasing gold.

Regarding finding percentages like "The percentage of those women who actually do town-square dancing" and "The percentage of rural middle-aged Chinese women who are not in a position to purchase gold, dress and dye their hair like the woman in the picture and do town-square dancing", I have been unable to find any sources that discuss this information in the context of damas, so including this information (even if I could find sources for it outside the context of damas) would violate Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Synthesis. I agree that the article would be significantly improved if such information could be included but I did not find sourcing to support this information in the context of damas.

The modern usage of the term "dama" is not for referring to all Chinese middle-aged women. It is used to describe (and frequently insult) a subset of Chinese middle-aged women. There is no universally agreed upon definition of "dama" which could explain why there are no sources for all of these percentages. From Claudia Huang's article in Journal of Aging Studies:

Shortly before leaving Chengdu, the capital of China's southwestern Sichuan province at the end of 2017, I sent an informal survey to some friends on the popular Chinese messaging platform WeChat. This survey contained only one question: “how would you describe a dama?” ... The differences in people's responses did not catch my attention as much as the fact that nearly everyone who received the survey offered an answer. The specifics varied, but each person held a clear and developed picture of a dama in his or her mind's eye. On another occasion, my friend Xia— an educated and well-traveled woman in her late twenties, told me that it's impossible to pin down an exact description of a dama because “they like to dress differently for different occasions,” but that “you know one when you see one.”

Regarding "Perhaps the most important point here is that Chinese women of the dama type are not given a voice", I reviewed and cited numerous news articles, journal articles, and books. Some of these authors may have been written by middle-aged Chinese women (I did not check their ages). But I could not find a single source where the author(s) self-identified themselves as "damas" so I cannot call them damas in the article. "Dama" has become a pejorative term like Karen (slang) which may be why people generally don't self-identify.

Although I do not agree that the article is "unbalanced on the side of misogyny", I agree that like all Wikipedia articles, the article has a lot of room for improvement. I agree that "the much discussed dama image represents only a tiny fraction of middle aged Chinese women, and (I'm guessing) represents very few middle-aged women in the Chinese diaspora". There was no intention for the Wikipedia article to convey this message. Perhaps some of the wording could be made more clear that this is a stereotype and a pejorative term that in no way represents all Chinese middle-aged women, so I welcome examples of sentences that convey the wrong message and should be reworded. Perhaps the article can be expanded to include more perspectives from damas themselves. But to do that, sourcing has to be found to support this information.

Cunard (talk) 23:58, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for going to the trouble of writing your long and careful reply. I had already seen the examples and quotations that you gave in that reply. However, if the existing summary of the article represents the whole, then there is something wrong with the balance in my opinion. You say you have insufficient sources for the provision of balance, and you ask me to suggest new wording for you. This is a long and complex article, and I am supposed to be reviewing it, not re-writing such a large piece. If you are unable to improve the balance of the article for whatever reason, I feel that I cannot find it in my conscience to pass it for DYK as it stands. I suggest that you find another reviewer. All the best. Storye book (talk) 09:55, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

However, if the existing summary of the article represents the whole, then there is something wrong with the balance in my opinion. – the article complies with Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Due and undue weight, which says, "Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." The article fairly represents what the sources say about damas. I wish there were many more sources like the scholar Teng Wei that made statements like, "When we use dama as an insult, what we're really doing is suggesting that there's something inherently wrong with being a middle-aged woman. It's ageist, classist — and it's time to stop". That way, I could write more about why it is is bigoted to use the term to stereotype and to insult middle-aged women. Beyond what I have already included in the article, I did not find this in my survey of the literature. Per Wikipedia:No original research and WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS, without more sources, I cannot add more information about why it is bigoted to use the term to stereotype and to insult middle-aged women. If any editor finds a source I overlooked that discusses why "dama" is a bigoted term, I would be happy to add it. I have searched extensively for this information and did not find it.

You say you have insufficient sources for the provision of balance, and you ask me to suggest new wording for you. This is a long and complex article, and I am supposed to be reviewing it, not re-writing such a large piece. If you are unable to improve the balance of the article for whatever reason, I feel that I cannot find it in my conscience to pass it for DYK as it stands. – I went through the article myself and do not find anything unbalanced or biased. I asked you to point out any sentences you find to be unbalanced or biased in case I overlooked anything.

I suggest that you find another reviewer. – yes, I would like another reviewer. I cannot act on the suggestions made so far without violating Wikipedia:No original research and WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS.

Cunard (talk) 10:35, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

• New reviewer needed. BlueMoonset (talk) 23:15, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm picking this up as a reviewer. Here are my initial thoughts:

1. The article's quality seems better than other articles about comparable stereotypes. For example, consider the mother-in-law. The article that you get when you click on that link is quite pathetic. There's also mother-in-law joke but that's not much better.
2. The level of quality required for a DYK is not superlative; the articles are not expected to be of FA or GA quality.
3. We must beware of perfectionism. For example, Churchill said "The maxim 'Nothing avails but perfection' may be spelt shorter: 'Paralysis'."
4. I'm really not liking the ALT1 suggestion which will present the topic with the literal translation of "big mamas". This phrase has rather different connotations in Western culture. In particular, the word "big" would tend to mean outsize or fat in a western context – see Big Momma's House, for example. As I understand it, the word "big" in this context means first or dominant, being the traditional term of respect for the first or senior wife in a multi-wife household. As the subject is a distinctly Chinese stereotype, I reckon we should stick with dama, to avoid confusion with western stereotypes. So, I've unstruck the orginal hook.
5. I note that the linked page in the Chinese Wikipedia is a disambiguation page which separates the various shades of meaning for the phrase.

More anon. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:01, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback and for sharing your thoughts, Andrew Davidson (talk · contribs). I've proposed an ALT2 above that takes the original hook and makes it more concise. Cunard (talk) 23:46, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

• @Cunard: Thanks for the update. I've started reading the article carefully from the top and balked at the outset. The lead makes the classic mistake of starting "Chinese dama (clutter) is a term that refers to Chinese middle-aged women." This is contrary to MOS:REFERS and WP:DICDEF. We need to clarify what the topic is here. Is it:

1. The English phrase "Chinese dama" (the recent western usage)
2. The Chinese phrase "dama (大妈)" as a linguistic concept
3. The traditional Chinese first wife as a sociological concept
4. The traditional Chinese aunt as a sociological concept
5. The modern Chinese rich widow or middle-aged woman who follows fashion – speculating in gold, square-dancing or whatever – the recent journalistic/social media construct

Note again that the Chinese Wikipedia disambiguates, to treat these as separate topics. If we run that through Google Translate, it renders it as

---

Aunt may refer to:

• Appellation for middle-aged or middle-aged women in parts of China and Hong Kong

• In some parts of China, aunts are called aunts
• Chinese women who bought gold in large numbers in 2013 later switched to bitcoin
• The nanny from mainland China .

• On the Internet in Taiwan, there is a contemptuous tone, similar to that of a mother-in-law.
• The first mother, the concubine, the flat wife, and the children born in the step room call the father's original wife's wife
• Charlotte Lilly, the Japanese anime One Piece character, nicknamed BIG MOM.

---

This loses something in translation, of course, but shows that the Chinese think that these are separate. So my point is that we perhaps need to be more careful in conflating them.

Sorry to be pedantic about this but it seems essential to clarify what the topic is exactly. I suppose it's #5 in the list above but we need to define this more clearly at the outset.

Andrew🐉(talk) 11:30, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the good feedback about the lead, Andrew Davidson (talk · contribs). I've modified the lead based on your feedback to remove "refers" and to provide the most prevalent definition. Cunard (talk) 08:31, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@Cunard: I've taken another look at this and apologies for the delay. I'm still not satisfied as I don't think that my points have been adequately addressed. The lead still starts by talking of a "term" and its meanings, which is contrary to WP:DICDEF. And the proposed hook still talks about "big", which is too literal and misleading.

On the latter point, note that I recently started a Chinese topic too – Li Sixun. Britannica says that he is known as "Big General Li" to distinguish him from his son, "Little General Li". This must be a similar issue of translation and, following the usage of other sources, I explain this as "senior" or "the elder", which convey the sense better. My view is that we're supposed to be writing in English here and so should use the appropriate English words in such cases.

Others might be more accommodating on these points so I think we should agree to disagree. I don't want to approve this but I don't want to fail it either so I'll flag it for attention by another reviewer. Ok?

Andrew🐉(talk) 20:36, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Comment (for information only - not a review). Further to my long comment above, I have discovered a few more things on this subject, and perhaps I ought to share that with you. Firstly, some of my Chinese friends and acquaintances who have lived and worked for some years in several of the largest cities in China tell me that they have never heard of da ma's behaving in the way described in the article. Secondly, they point out that the top image, which serves to identify the subject, is of a woman in Taiwan, although the article appears to concentrate mostly on mainland China. I find it hard to believe that one can generalise about da ma's in both countries where culture has been diverging since 1949 (even though Chinese leaders might claim that it is all one country). Storye book (talk) 21:28, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

The English-language sources I reviewed describe "Chinese damas" as having the literal meaning "Chinese big mamas" or "Chinese big mother", so I don't consider the hook to be inaccurate or misleading. I cannot use another literal meaning as that would violate Wikipedia:No original research. I am open to alternative hooks being proposed.

"Chinese damas" is a term that has had multiple meanings over time. This article discusses those multiple meanings. I don't think discussing the historical background of why the term has multiple meanings violates WP:DICDEF.

Regarding, "some of my Chinese friends and acquaintances who have lived and worked for some years in several of the largest cities in China tell me that they have never heard of da ma's behaving in the way described in the article", this is original research. The article is based on what reliable sources say about damas. From Wikipedia:No original research#Verifiability, "Wikipedia's content is determined by previously published information rather than by the personal beliefs or experiences of its editors."

I've removed the photo.

Cunard (talk) 08:36, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

The original research rule applies to the article only. It is permissible to use original research to suggest improvement (of e.g. neutrality) of an article on the article's talk page or on a discussion template such as this. Storye book (talk) 10:40, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Time to cut this knot: I find the article to be good enough and neutral enough, not unfairly representing matters. I also find that Tbhotch's ALT1 hook is the hookiest, and that the addition of quotation marks removes the direct reference to a stereotype that is widely held in some but not all communities where English is one of the main languages. Drmies (talk) 18:19, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

ALT1 to T:DYK/P1