Audience Echoes｜映後留言板

First, I want to say that after watching it, I felt empowered. As the interviews put it, doing gender work can sometimes feel like fighting alone. But I think back to meeting diasporic queers at Bangkok Pride, and to seeing in the documentary what the Feminist Five went through: how they were reborn out of loss. I also saw the different ways people in China, Japan and Korea fight for and push gender issues forward, and at times I glimpsed our predecessors in their youth. In those moments I thought of the manga Orb: On the Movements of the Earth (my chūnibyō flaring up). There’s a feeling of being moved by what gets passed down: even though every stage met with setbacks, we never stopped. So I really resonated with the film’s “affective resonance,” and I was moved. Also, seeing Korea move forward, I feel gloomy Hong Kong deserves a little celebration too. The documentary gave me a sense of synchronicity, especially the global political pressure and the difficulty of handing things on to an even younger generation. A Korean interviewee said that in the past, because of the English barrier, they didn’t understand the language of the UN. For our generation, it’s that we have never understood this mechanism at all. Maybe it’s learned helplessness. Also, I often wonder: as a non-binary person, can I represent women’s issues? In the documentary, my name could actually be shown as Erica/Erics (they/them), to highlight this small tug-of-war between this gender identity and women’s issues~ While watching, I kept wondering whether there would be an answer to the “split between women’s and gender-diverse consciousness.” And while I was waiting for it, it turned out I was the one who had put that question to Mabel of the Association for the Advancement of Feminism, which I found rather interesting. Gender, democratic institutions and the political climate are bound together. In days when collective gatherings are lost and same-sex partnership registration is scrapped, the powerlessness is plain, and gender suddenly seems to lose its political edge. I wondered whether there would be a way out. Having seen the different approaches across East Asia, I’m convinced that taking the path of gender education can also make everyday gender politics possible, and can connect with the next generation so they can carry on holding a place for gender equality. Also, seeing Judith Butler speak about a way forward: we can support cross-issue work to build broader civic literacy. I also hope to see more of the Korean part in future. I believe they’ll offer insights to other places too.

I thought of the 2022 Shanghai lockdown. A video was circulating at the time: a young couple who refused to be forcibly transferred to quarantine were threatened that the punishment would “affect three generations.” One of them replied: “We are the last generation, thank you.” Later, one day, I put on my “This Is What a Feminist Looks Like” T-shirt, wrote “We are the last generation” on the back, and went downstairs for a PCR test. Someone photographed me from behind, and the photo was later shared widely on Twitter. What many people saw was just a small act of resistance by one Shanghai resident in that moment. But for me, what carried me down those stairs was not only anger. It was also the strength feminism had given me. Feminism has never been only about gender. It is about everyone. After I came to Tokyo, I joined some public events, like Pride Month and International Women’s Day marches. But when I sent these photos and records back behind the Wall, I soon found that almost all of them were blocked. Things at home have been slowly tightening all along. In 2015 and 2016, people still carried rainbow flags at the Shanghai Marathon, but later, as soon as anything rainbow appeared, the materials were strictly censored. Every Pride Month, and at other important moments, event materials have to be inspected. One bar was ordered to shut down for hosting a script reading of The Vagina Monologues. The film talks about the relationship between feminists and LGBTQ communities. In China’s reality, the crackdowns on these two groups often happen at the same time. That’s why I think we need to connect with each other all the more. Honestly, when I first came across feminism and queer culture, I treated them as little more than a fashionable label. Then some things happened: the MeToo movement, the Xianzi–Zhu Jun case, the chained woman of Xuzhou. Slowly I began to see real people and to know what had really happened, and after that it became hard to pretend I hadn’t seen anything. The film mentions the 1995 World Conference on Women and the connections that later formed across East Asia. I knew nothing about any of it before. It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but it made me realize that much of the time we don’t know what history we’re standing in. I’m in Japan now, and I don’t know how much longer I can stay here. But as long as I’m alive, I will keep speaking out, writing down and recording what I see. And I will do my best to carry the world I’ve seen out here back behind the Wall. Even if this information is blocked again and again, I will keep doing this.

I want to record the Bao Li case. By six degrees of separation, I was unusually close to it. More precisely, a friend of mine was caught up in it, and other friends and I stayed with that friend through what happened and the storm of public opinion that followed. When it first happened, we were shocked. We talked a lot about the causes behind it, and about how everyone could help Bao Li and her mother. After the follow-up piece by Zhengmian Lianjie was published, we had more discussions, because the friends who were helping Bao Li at the time felt the report contained many inaccuracies and that her family had not been properly informed. It later set off a lot of debate about journalistic ethics. For me, though, it meant thinking and talking a great deal about whether the perspective of the people directly involved, and what they care about, matter enormously to how the whole story is told. That is why her family and the group of friends later published several pieces themselves. This was a long time ago now. Bao Li never woke up and is gone, and the friends who were caught up in it have moved on to new lives. But much later, I saw that the law had made the Bao Li case a reference case, and psychological abuse was brought within the scope of domestic violence. Still, I don’t think anyone won. It was really a failure: the family and friends around her lost her forever. But I’m also grateful for everyone’s continued efforts, which are why failure is not only failure. As for the film, what I had was more of an understanding and a feeling. I’d long known that a great deal came about after the 1995 World Conference on Women, and that the spread of women’s consciousness in China today continues within that lineage. But tracing it back again through the film, I still felt deeply stirred. Thirty years ago there truly was nothing, just a small group of people. And now there are so many. I’ve always felt that what sets feminism apart is that it is a theory closely bound up with life and the everyday, or one that grows out of it. The longer I’ve identified as a feminist, the less I actually talk about big things in daily life. Instead, in every small everyday choice, I make the choice I’d rather make. For example, I offer collaboration opportunities first to women creators I like working with, or to other women. I don’t see this as us making some kind of gender choice. Rather, since men have received so much favoritism from childhood on, why shouldn’t I, this time, when the choice is mine, give that favor to women? But it isn’t only that simple. On a deeper level, from working with women over a long time, I can feel everyone’s consideration for one another. Each person thinks a step ahead for the other and doesn’t want to put them out, and all of this makes working together go more smoothly. What I saw in the film did give me some encouragement. Some of what we’re trying now may not show results in the short term, but perhaps it will spread to other places and be passed on to some people. This vague feeling will carry all of us further. At the Taipei screening, Wu Wei-ting shared her experience, which filled in a great deal of past context, not only in Taiwan but across East Asia. I hope to have the chance to hear more of her stories of past participation and collaboration. I feel friendship mattered enormously in all of it. She also mentioned going from arguing with Chinese feminist activists to eventually becoming friends. They didn’t completely win each other over, but everyone moved forward together, with their differences coexisting. What I’ve found really frustrating at times over the past two years is the feeling that everyone is sunk deep in their own nation and doesn’t care much about other places. But I’ve always believed that exchange and communication are necessary and must not stop. The juxtaposition in this film matters a lot. At last we’re not always talking about a single place. We may each be at different stages right now, dealing with problems that aren’t quite the same, but only by seeing each other can we share a direction.

Between 1995 and 2005, I experienced sexual abuse by my father’s younger brother while my father was present. When I tried to tell my father what had happened, he did not respond and simply continued watching TV. As the MeToo movement gained traction in South Korea in the 2010s, my mother once made a remark comparing me to my father’s younger brother. In tears, I asked, “How can you say I resemble the person who sexually abused me?” At that point, my mother began to take the situation seriously. When she later asked, “Didn’t that experience make you live more cautiously?” I was able to clearly identify her response as a form of secondary victimization. The situation was eventually addressed after my mother spoke to my father. Perhaps the MeToo movement in South Korea has had a direct or indirect impact on our family as well. Watching the film in Mae Sot, Thailand, alongside friends from Myanmar and other countries, I couldn’t help but think how deeply connected East Asia’s past is to Myanmar’s present. As a doctoral student focusing on Myanmar studies, I found it profoundly meaningful that Aung San Suu Kyi, as one middle-aged male attendee pointed out, delivered her speech via a sent video at a 1995 conference right after being released from her six-year house arrest. As a South Korean, it was astonishing to see how closely women activists across various East Asian countries interacted and influenced one another. I recall my own feelings of loneliness and isolation during the 2008 candlelight vigils, subsequent protests, and within youth activist circles, where the prevailing discourse was always to ‘consider women’s issues later, after other critical matters are resolved! Hearing the South Korean women activists calmly mention that they were not necessarily connected deeply resonated with me, making me feel indirectly understood. It feels as though East Asia’s ‘past’ is being replayed and repeated in Southeast Asia’s-particularly Myanmar’s-‘present’. In this regard, it was heartening to confirm through the film that solidarity and communication among women activists across Asia are continuously necessary and, in fact, ongoing.

In December 2023, a group of girls and I publicly called out a serial sexual harasser as part of MeToo. It wasn’t the first time I had experienced sexual violence, but some things can’t be faced alone. There is strength only when people come together. Next, we want to keep this strength going by publishing a zine, holding public conversations, and letting the energy spread further. Activists in every era face their own challenges, and each of them finds a way to keep going.

I was born in 2001, and this year marks my tenth year of political activism. Since 2016 I’ve been part of all kinds of political actions, such as Fridays For Future, migrant support work and the Palestinian liberation movement. My childhood and my past were not wonderful. You could even say they were full of darkness. But over the past few years I have kept working to build a better world for myself and my fellow people. I think it has been worth it. As part of the diaspora, I grew up quite disconnected from China and Sinophone culture. I’m glad that through this film and this event I learned more about queer and women’s movements in East Asia. I think Wei Tingting is so cool hahaha

For myself, I want to mark March 8, 2023, the first time I went to a Women’s Day march on my own. A line from the film that stayed with me: feminists like to look for hope where there is none.

I’ve forgotten exactly which line it was, but during the part at the end that asks “why keep going,” I choked up. I felt encouraged.

Mark 2015-2026, came out to my mum + discovered feminism and how it impacts so many generations Impressed by the deaf activist

The deaf activist in Chongqing was very inspiring to me because she is working in such a difficult environment, but still seems to maintain such a sunny attitude. I also thought about how I often feel cynical about the optimism many of the interviewees expressed. But I really do think that their optimism is crucial, and I do believe - especially after listening to Feng Yuan's comments - that just because previous progress or foundations are invisible, doesn't mean they don't matter

Xianzi losing her case in 2022 was a turning point that left a strong impression on me. For someone of my generation, born after 1995, the Xianzi case was an ongoing event that left a deep mark on my growing up. The defiance, the anger, the frustration and refusal to accept it, and the refusal to give up that the case crystallized are feelings that will stay with me. The part about people with visual and hearing impairments stayed with me. Even against resistance, they still find ways to express themselves, and they still take action.

In spring 2025 I returned from Tokyo to Shanghai and saw Prima Facie showing in cinemas across the country. For me, it was a moment of seeing again that China’s environment is changing. On the one hand, I had worked, in my job and in my life, to open up space for discussing gender issues, and most of the time it was disappointment after disappointment. A nationwide release of a film that asks this much of its audience clearly reflects what activists’ efforts have achieved. On the other hand, there’s the contrast with Japan. I saw the film released there too, but on a very small scale and for a very short run, with hardly any spark of discussion. So seeing it back home was really exciting. Seeing the “shanghai lockdown survivor” T-shirt appear. It’s one of the souvenirs I brought with me from Shanghai to Tokyo.

For myself, it would probably be 2017–2018. So much happened that year. With my friends, I took part in a performance of [[The Vagina Monologues]], which was then cancelled. I met many other gender and sexuality communities, and we exchanged ideas and worked together. I also got to meet our predecessors from the film and learn about their experiences. :) During the parts about the Feminist Five and Wei Tingting’s sharing, I felt like crying. So much has happened again over these ten-odd years. Behind these simple words, everyone has been through so many hard things that can’t be told in full… so it really moved me.

For myself, I want to record my mother’s affair. She never wanted me to bring it up. She would cry, apologize, and angrily tell me she hadn’t done anything wrong. I didn’t know how to respond to the shame that would burst out of her, but I told her again and again that I was very grateful to her. It was only then that I learned that women cannot (even if they very much wish to) always be obedient. About the film: the fields of tall, long flags at the Korean political protests were really striking. They lifted the political movement up from the level of the body, even turning it into a kind of spiritual image.

The screening was on March 16, Lin Yi-han’s birthday. I want to mark the moment I first finished reading Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise. My memories of this book are intertwined with #MeToo. Even though I often see passages from it quoted when people share stories of sexual harassment, I still don’t dare to reread the whole book. What I most want to mark is still the last chapter, Into the New World. Yesterday, after coming home from the film, I had it on repeat while writing in my journal.

I remember something the director said: today, I may not be as important as I think I am, but what I’m doing now matters for the future.

One moment I would like to share is the time when I decided to raise my child on my own. It was a difficult period in my life when I experienced emotional isolation and realized that I needed to make a difficult decision for myself and my child. Choosing to step away from an unhealthy situation and become a single mother was not easy, but it became a turning point in my life. This moment shaped my understanding of resilience, women’s agency, dignity, and the importance of having the freedom to make decisions about one’s own life. It also influenced my later interest in supporting women, young people, and communities through education and social work.

At Hong Kong Pride in 2019, friends from the mainland got phone calls telling them they were not allowed to go. As Tingting says in the film, our generation knew little about the ‘95 World Conference on Women, and only after learning about it did we realize how much there was. So now, are those born after 2000 just like us, not knowing the stories we lived through in the past? But all of these stories deserve to be told.

In 2015, when I was still in high school, I realized for the first time that people of our generation were doing something so brave (the Feminist Five). The world stopped being spotless and simple; I became aware of gender issues and of the inequality that is everywhere. I really loved everyone’s answers at the end about what keeps them going. Not a single person had ever thought of giving up. Everyone believed in doing something and sticking with it. Change happens slowly.

I feel that the very beginning, in 1995, was the hardest, groping completely in the dark. What stayed with me most in the film was the connection between the feminist movements in China, Japan and Korea. As the film says, the power of this connection is immense. You are not alone: so many people, in different places, are raising their flags and their voices for the same things, just as you are.

What stayed with me most was an unfinished conversation, or rather one that’s still ongoing, between two witnesses from different generations in Hong Kong, about the different ways people of these two eras do things: from pushing for legislation, to what might now be a more artsy, cultural approach. A different social environment may also mean that the way we do things is changing. I’m curious, or rather, I want to keep asking: what have these changes given us? And what might they make us lose? I hope there will be chances to see more conversations like this between generations.

In my experience, since I was born in the 2000s, I can only say that most of the movements I experienced were around 2020. We all know what happened then; the blank paper and Xiaohuamei forced me to think about women’s rights and social position. As a master’s student in business school, your movie is good material for me to connect social aspects to economic material. While watching, I can not ignore that those women who engage in the feminist movement and queer movement face an economic penalty from this patriarchal system, potentially at different levels. If you engage deeply in these movements, whether you are caught or not, your future career is not clear, and you will always suffer and struggle.

I want to record April 18, 2026. That day, in the middle of a community event, we faced a major challenge for the first time. We had always run events within the community, tasting all the ups and downs of community-building through action. But that day I realized, in my body, that until then we had been inside a kind of comfort zone. After that day, we reflected on our actions many times: as organizers, on how we set up events, on our inner positions; on where we could do better, and on what we can’t yet do. How do we build a safer environment? How do we face differing views and behaviors within the community? When we see behavior that could harm other members, how do we take a clear stance? And yet how can we be sure our stance isn’t arrogance and prejudice? I think that day will stay with us for a long, long time. Every step counts. Without the tireless efforts of those who came before us, we wouldn’t have what we have today. This encourages us to keep going, to see what things will look like at the 40th anniversary of the World Conference on Women. But no one should have to walk alone. Whatever our hopes for the future look like, and whatever role each of us plays in the action, we should all know that we are never alone.

For myself, I want to record 2016, because that was when I took part in my first-ever LGBTQ event, at university. It was the door opening onto a new world. I hope the new generation will keep doing this. As long as we don’t stop, we’ll always be by each other’s side.

I resonated with what a Japanese feminist activist said: it was anger that kept me going.

Summer, maybe 2017? I was on the train from Berlin to Amsterdam. The woman next to me offered me cookies she had brought for the train. In return, I shared the almonds I had brought with her and her kids. She had recently moved from Syria to Germany and was learning German, but I don’t really know German, and she didn’t know much English (and of course not Swedish, my mothertongue). But we communicated with smiles and the words we shared, and wrote our birth years on paper. We were close in age. I wanted to share this moment because it was such a lovely, unexpected meeting with a stranger. Two women going between two different foreign countries, close in age but from totally different places and lives, trying our best to understand each other. I felt tears running down my cheeks while watching the movie. I was so touched seeing individuals work together despite the tense official relationships between their respective countries. I was perhaps especially inspired by seeing Japanese women stand up for reparations for “comfort women”, for going against social norms in solidarity with women who have been mistreated by their country. It’s important to stand up for our own rights, but also for the rights of others!

I think what moved me most was probably what Tingting expressed. Like her, I’ve long helped out and been active in sexual minority communities in mainland China, and after the White Paper protests I fled to live in Germany. I often joke that I’m a “deserter”: my friends at home are still fighting on the front line, while I hide here making a living, still unable to find my place, left with nothing but a life of “wind, flowers, snow and moon,” a life of idle leisure. Every time I take part in community activities or get in touch with old friends at home, this situation makes me feel ashamed. But honestly, you can’t take something you’ve poured years of your life into and just “quit” it completely once you’ve left. At least I can’t. So when I saw Wei Tingting’s expression at the end, as if she wanted to say something but held back, I understood completely what they meant. Some things can only be done on the ground. After I left, I found that the things I used to do aren’t needed here at all, like helping trans women in shelters. From the time I left until now, I’ve been at a loss over how to change the way I fight. It’s a bit like people who shone during the martial-law era in Taiwan, whose ways of doing things became less accepted by the new generation after democratization. I’ve always loved something Liu Luo-yi of the Plain Law Movement said: “Everyone has their own position in the fight.” Some activists are great at speaking out; some want to march and petition for the issues they care about. Since my skills are no use now that I’ve left, I can at least earn money and donate, right? Donating matters too. It’s just that accepting that I can’t help here, and that my past experience is of no use at all, leaves a real gap inside. That’s also why I pay close attention to how the past activists in this documentary are doing now: I deeply resonate with their helplessness. This state of feeling helpless yet unwilling to let go of my ties to what I care about is something I know deeply. If I had to sum it up in one phrase, it would be “Die Hard.” I can’t truly settle into a carefree, wind-flowers-snow-and-moon frame of mind, because I can’t forget where I came from, who has helped me, whom I have helped, and that I still want to keep doing this. I think this is a state many activists in the diaspora run into.

The BLM movement in the US in 2020 was what first introduced me to the concept of intersectionality. It helped me better understand how the oppressions faced by different groups are connected, and it made me reflect on my own experiences, identity and privilege. I’m very grateful to the film team for making this documentary, which connects and maps out East Asian feminist movements across different times and places. Although online sexual violence and far-right currents in recent years have made me anxious, this film showed me how women have fought all along for their rights and freedom, and it gave me strength. I’m also grateful to everyone who watched this documentary together with me.

I was deeply moved, not only because the women from many countries who were so fired up back then are now white-haired and still devoted to their pursuits, but also because the film shows a younger generation every bit as committed as those who came before them, the filmmakers included. Gathering historical materials and interviews across borders is extremely hard, and I feel both moved and gratified. What touched me most was Tingting describing how she felt when she learned of the support from women in other countries. It was handled beautifully. During the film’s long stretch of wordless silence, I cried. I truly hope you will make another film that brings to light the people in each country who first proposed and organized this great undertaking, so that later generations will know them. As a historian, I can never stop thinking about the historical figures who have been obscured and forgotten. Of course, that would be even harder. I fear some of them have already passed away. It is only a wish.

As a journalist who has followed and reported on gender issues and the feminist movement in China ever since covering the Feminist Five in 2015, I was deeply moved to see activists who later became my friends, and many other interviewees. I thought about the decade of the movement we lived through together and the individuals within it; about my own growth, changes and struggles over these ten years; and about the ever-worsening political environment we face together. Seeing feminists of different generations across East Asia say at the end that they will persist — that every achievement comes from the struggles of one generation after another — I truly felt that women have no country, only each other.

There were a few moments I can’t forget: an interviewee saying “we learned UN language”; a Taiwanese activist packing conference materials into her suitcase to take home, because “Taiwan doesn’t have these”; and someone naming gender-based violence and turning it into cards that can be drawn, read and passed on. I keep thinking about that phrase, “learning UN language.” First of all, it means this was not their language. They had to learn it before they could put their experience into it, before they could be heard. The phrase points to two things at once: the possibility of entering, and the cost of entering. There is strategy and compromise in it: abstracting concrete, embodied experience into concepts that can be discussed in a meeting room inevitably means something is lost. And there is also a kind of dignity: I am willing to pay this price to enter your language, because my experience needs to enter a larger context and become memory. The conference thirty years ago and the search thirty years later both revolve around “memory.” Memory does not form on its own. For those on the margins, experience does not automatically settle into history or naturally turn into vision; it can struggle even to persist. More often, it keeps happening and keeps dissipating. What the moments above reveal is precisely a longing to “make memory”: learning a language so that experience can enter a context; carrying materials home because experience won’t reach “elsewhere” by itself; turning violence into cards so that the naming won’t vanish, but can be held and passed on. This longing is moving because everyone knows: it’s not that we have no history, only that history will not write us in on its own. By default, our experience will not be kept. And so every action points toward an imagined future: there will be an “after,” an “elsewhere,” someone not yet met, who will need these experiences. And the documentary itself is part of this action and this imagination.

I’m an 18-year-old Chinese woman, and I came to the screening at the University of Melbourne. It’s been half an hour since the film ended, but what stirred in me still hasn’t settled. Before watching this film, I knew almost nothing about the movements for women’s equality in East Asia and in China, because they were never mentioned. I once took a course on the history of Western women’s liberation, a structured, effective liberation movement divided into waves. After finishing it, I felt very disappointed by my own country’s “blank” in this area (I knew nothing at the time). Because of this gap in knowledge, I once wondered whether Chinese women were living under a pitch-dark, inescapable patriarchal structure, their development held back by the system, the law and all kinds of restrictions. Only today, through the film, did I learn for the first time about the World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995, and that at least ten years ago, many people from all over the world were working for women’s equality in China. Even now, the voices for women’s equality haven’t disappeared; they just haven’t been visible anywhere I could see them. Through the film, I saw how the East Asian countries marginalized within mainstream Western feminism have struggled to make sure women’s rights are no longer ignored, and to make the world better and better. I felt an immense strength from it. Before, I had never made up my mind about whether to become a feminist, because every social media platform I’d encountered portrayed feminism as an extreme ideology. Now, the strength of women across East Asia joining together toward a brighter, more woman-friendly, more beautiful future has given me a strong urge to say “let me do something too” and to become a feminist. Like the fifth part of the film, I want to contribute my own share, and, united with the women, walk toward a brighter world and future!

In 2020, I experienced domestic violence myself and called a helpline. But my first reaction was still “I provoked him,” that it was my fault, and I kept making excuses for the other person. It took me a long time to get back to feeling and thinking from my own center. It was during the pandemic, and I felt completely shut in and hopeless. The anti-violence-against-women hotline and all kinds of information online gave me a great deal of strength. If I remember correctly, at the start of the film several of the interviewees appeared simply as participants at the 1995 World Conference on Women, and only when the film looked back were their identities revealed one by one. That contrast was stunning. A few prosecutors and lawyers looked just like the aunties around us; I never imagined that thirty years ago, at the conference, they were so full of spirit, with calls that rang out loud enough to wake the deaf. At the Taipei screening, Ms. Wu’s relaxed, easygoing talk was also incredibly powerful. She told the story of these thirty years with humor, unhurriedly. I had expected people to discuss lots of difficulties and to look back on history through a revolutionary narrative. Instead, what I felt was everyone’s sincere and tender love, the courage to face hardship head-on, and a slow but never-extinguished hope.

I want to mark 2022, when I made posters about the chained woman with my friends. What moved me in the film was Matsui Yayori. Although she is no longer with us, I'm deeply grateful for the Women's Tribunal she organised — I learned about her work last year while researching wartime sexual violence.

Around 2015, I encountered feminism at university, and since then I’ve seen the world from a different angle. What stayed with me was Na-young from Korea saying that the reason she keeps fighting is “It’s my duty.” We have enjoyed the fruits of the struggles of those who came before us; our task is to remember and carry on.

2026: living in the present. I understand my relationship with my feminist mother better, and also the gender dynamics in my relationship with my Japanese partner. My partner and I both love Les Misérables, so hearing the Chinese feminist version of “Do You Hear the People Sing” was quite moving.

I was born in 2000, biologically male. Until 2015, I had never paid attention to this world. When I saw Part 5, titled 다시 만난 세계 (Into the New World), I could more or less guess that the impeachment of Yoon Suk-yeol would come up. The subtitles at the end of this part mentioned “social outcasts.” I don’t know Korean, but I know that in Taiwan in late 2024 and early 2025, many people who wanted to make their country better were also attacked as “social outcasts.” And your work tells us that it is precisely the people called “social outcasts” who, by refusing to give up and doing something, have made this world a little bit better. Thank you for your documentary.

I want to mark the protest in Tokyo in September 2024, shown in the film, held in solidarity with Korea against deepfake sexual content. On that day, many friends who usually work on different things and don’t know each other that well all quietly stood up to express their anger, coming together again around something we all cared about. That kind of solidarity is a really important feminist moment. I also want to mark the moment Wei Tingting described of brushing past Feminist Voices at Jianguomen subway station, and the Hong Kong Pride parade, where organizations and groups from so many parts of East Asia appeared on the street together. I love this feeling of streams converging and meeting, then scattering again, each going back to their own work.

The discussions of gender issues on Weibo that followed the 2018 MeToo movement made me realize that the treatment and incidents I had felt were wrong and unbearable were not my problem. They are common to so many people in marginal positions. We shared the same reflection, pain, struggle and critique, and through media, our spirits and experiences connected and resonated. I deeply empathize and resonate with what people said about anger being what drives action. For me, anger is not a negative emotion. It is my black life force, the raw, vivid feeling of being alive, and the source of energy that keeps me acting and creating.

Makiko-san, sitting right in front of me, said softly that in 1995 she was still an engineer. Sensing that something wasn’t right, she wanted to go to the conference and see for herself. In Beijing she met an NHK journalist (Matsui Yayori), and that encounter led her to quit her job, study women’s studies abroad, and become a women’s activist. Thirty years later, sitting in a room watching this documentary, she remembered what she had lived through back then. A friend said her mother got divorced in 1996. Perhaps it had something to do with people beginning to talk about the idea of domestic violence after ‘95. Only then did she learn that what she had been through had a name: domestic violence. And a Korean interviewee in the film said that the women’s movement will support social movements, but democratic social movements won’t necessarily support the women’s movement’s issues.

I really liked what a Korean interviewee said in answer to “what kept you going”: all the rights women have now were won through struggle, and if we stop struggling, these rights will be eroded again. It reminded me of the repression and setbacks feminism has faced at home. Political suppression has made the feminist movement more dispersed and more private. It’s very hard for us to express ourselves and advocate in an organized way in public space anymore, and to some extent this has also made it hard to advance women’s rights directly through political pressure. But on the other hand, everyday feminist ideas have taken root in a new generation of women. We’ve become more sensitive to misogynistic expression in public space, and we’re using the law and public opinion to push back against violations of women’s rights. The change in the views of a much wider population may be the biggest achievement of this decade.

In 2022, a friend told me about being sexually harassed by a professor. Afterwards, we shared what had happened in campus groups and online, and quickly got in touch with other victims. It turned out to be a case of sexual harassment spanning several major universities and lasting for years. Together with the victims, we compiled evidence (including a recording of the perpetrator admitting to the harassment) and submitted a formal report to the Discipline Inspection Commission. The whole process was long and very hard. [[In the end, the professor was dismissed.] I deeply resonated with the “rupture” the film talks about. When I first encountered feminist ideas, I had no idea that anyone had come before us. Everything felt like a vacuum. Perhaps ten years from now, the next generation of feminists will feel the same. I’m so grateful for a documentary like this. Feminists have never been broken off from one another: every generation of feminists has kept working tirelessly, perhaps at different times, in different corners of the world. However hard the pressure from outside, the spark of feminism will never go out. Together we are a blazing fire; scattered, we are a sky full of stars.

I was born in 1996. When I first encountered feminist ideas in 2015, I heard about Feminist Voices and Xiao Meili; their protest dressed as brides even made the news. That really was a rare moment in China, when things were relatively open and there was space for something like that.

I really loved how the first part of the film gathers and tells the history. It introduced me to so many predecessors and showed me that there had been a whole wave of ideas like this, that it didn’t start out the way things are now, that they too once fought together in such solidarity. What moved me most was actually the turn to backlash: the Feminist Five were arrested, then major Weibo accounts and WeChat public accounts were shut down, and the space to speak out was squeezed smaller and smaller. That repression and pain is the environment I know; watching this part, I felt something like, “Oh, I’m back in reality.” I started university in mainland China in 2021, and by the time I began encountering different views and growing a sense of my own agency, the soil around me had long since become very barren. In my fourth year, through an event, I found my way into my university’s LGBTQ society, and only then did I learn that such an organization existed. Later, a friend who had once handed out sanitary pads with me on campus and campaigned against period shame wanted to organize a march on campus to fight for our rights. But the night before, someone in the group chat reported them. They were made to leave their phone behind and were “invited to tea” by the administration. Afterwards, their WeChat Moments were edited into a version full of praise, for the administrators to see. When I first found out, I felt shocked and afraid, and yet it was what I’d expected… Looking back now, what happened to this friend stirred up fear in me, and I began to suppress my anger and my wish to take part and speak out. I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know what. Like the “powerlessness” the film talks about at the end: many people have left, and those who stayed feel they don’t yet have enough experience, yet they have to start training newcomers. The rupture in China’s feminist movement is disheartening and leaves you feeling powerless, and as someone who grew up inside that rupture, I’ve always wanted to escape, not knowing how to express my suppressed anger and grief. But it turns out that on that land, group after group of people have walked this road before. Knowing they exist is, for me, right now, an immense encouragement.

This is the chain of questions that feminists from my generation and my cultural background face when we try to act: how to look back on the World Conference on Women, how to understand the lineage of Chinese feminism, how to view the room for action during the relatively looser period of the 2010s, how people later dispersed into diaspora, what happened in Hong Kong, what happened in Taiwan, how overseas communities carry on, how East Asian feminism… For me, what threads the film together isn’t chronology. It’s the attempt to find one’s own place between history and the present, and the attempt, in ever more uncertain times, to understand and work through problems by connecting in all kinds of ways. I also really loved some of the emotional moments in the film. For example, the shot of the bridge in Chongqing, where the music suddenly turns light; and the scene with the palm trees and the sea. Those images woven in between the archival material and the interviews let me feel the weight, or the release, of emotion you carried as filmmakers facing this history and this present. Those parts were really moving. It felt like someone was watching all this together with me.

The 2018 MeToo, I suppose. I was born in 2001, and before 2018 I had always lived inside a gender-friendly bubble, until MeToo brought feminist issues into the online world. The segments about gay and queer people. I’m a lesbian myself (I came out successfully, and my family understands), but those parts still struck a deeper chord with me. Gender issues are still visible in mainland China, and there’s been some small progress in recent years, but on the mainland, homosexuality can probably only be permitted to exist, nothing more.

Many of the events in the film, including the Feminist Five and the MeToo movement, run through my understanding of feminism, and my own story, across my twenties. I was very moved to see this story again in the Netherlands. Thank you for preserving important historical memory in an age when memory keeps being erased, so that generation after generation of feminists won’t have to stand on barren ground and start building from scratch, again and again.

What struck me was what Xiaotong said during the Q&A about one of the challenges of making the film: the lack or loss of archival materials. I am currently a PhD student researching feminist and queer archiving in India, and this resonated strongly with me. I began my research partly because I wanted to know my own history of feminism, but I didn’t know where to start. Another reason was that I realized that a lot of documentation had either been lost or was collecting dust in basements and cupboards. While talking to archivists and feminist activists, I was told that a lot of archival materials were actually to be found in archives and libraries in the West, particularly in the US, and that it is only recently that “archives” has entered public feminist discourse, even though documentation has always been an important part of feminist work.

2025: I chose to study gender studies and came to the Netherlands. It was an important turning point in my life, and the year I began learning systematically about feminism’s history, schools of thought and scholars. For me, reading and writing piece after piece, I felt that I was standing alongside women and LGBTQ communities all over the world. Change is never a castle in the air; it comes from the efforts of countless people, from the past to the present and on into the future. Like the women in this film doing “small” things, [[from all over the world, flowing together into rivers, lakes and seas]]. I remember one class where we read Narayan together, and it set off a strong resonance. A Filipina classmate and I shared with everyone the distance between us and our mothers. Our Dutch classmate, too, could feel the sadness of being unable to truly communicate with family, and of being constantly attacked as “foreign forces” in Third World countries. She said to me: “It must be so hard.” In that moment I felt we were connected through feminism, across race, region and identity. This is probably the connection someone mentioned after the screening: it’s born of shared understanding, empathy and understanding one another, and it is so precious.

For me, it was learning about comfort women issues around 2014- 15. It directed my anger towards a specific feminist issue. Regarding the film: 1. Hong Kong Pride parade, when each of the participating groups said their name. 2. When the Korean activist said that feminist groups often support social movements but not the other way around. It was very profound. 3. Amazing to see the different ways groups in East Asia have progressed on feminist issues. The film was able to connect these stories so well.

The part that resonated with me the most was that we need to constantly think about how we can train and prepare future generations of activists. At the same time, movements get transformed according to the realities of their time. A reflection, indirectly related to that: I notice that a lot of video or mobile games (not without the help of AI-generated content) reinforce the objectification of women and gender stereotypes. This, in turn, is supported by the dominance of men in the game development industry. How can we combat that in a constructive way?

My generation’s so-called “moments of awakening” seem to be fractured. In time, they fall roughly into two kinds. The first comes from social events tied to self-exploration, which spark a vague sense of justice. These usually have no fixed point in time; they’re scattered across a dense stretch of time. For me, this kind of awakening was, politically, probably around 2016–17; my feminist awakening came a little earlier. The sources were Weibo, Renren, and analytical posts on early WeChat public accounts. The second kind can be traced to a clear point in time. Once a social event has woken that vague sense of justice, you become willing to spend more time exploring these issues. Then, in historical materials, in documentaries, even in the stories told by older comrades, you suddenly discover that so-called “decisive” event buried in the past, and how, in the first half of your life when you knew nothing of it, it quietly shaped the environment you lived in, quietly fostered the writing that vaguely awakened you, quietly set in motion this exploration that takes real effort, and quietly shaped you into who you are now. For feminism, the decisive event is probably the ‘95 World Conference on Women. For me, this second decisive moment of feminism was this screening. Also, the Beijing Platform for Action matters so much to the feminist movement that many later conferences are still named “Beijing+”, and yet those of us who actually lived in Beijing remained in a state of almost pristine ignorance about it. I’m not an environmental activist, but I’ve still heard of the Copenhagen climate accord. I (like most of the others there) consider myself someone who cares about women’s issues, and many of them are activists, yet before this screening we knew nothing at all about this conference.

Although I’ve followed social issues, feminism and activism, for a long time I stayed on the periphery. Maybe it came from an instinct for self-protection, or maybe it was because one person’s strength felt too small to stand up to such an enormous social system. But watching this film today, I felt greatly encouraged. Especially when I saw everyone’s answers at the end to “what keeps you going,” I wanted to make right now a beginning. From here on, I don’t want to stay on the periphery. I want to push myself as far as I can and join the action. Our future is still something we have to change ourselves… I think. For me it was the part about the five girls in 2015. Even though they went through harm and violence at the hands of the system, I felt they all came across as easygoing and funny. I can hardly imagine what exactly they went through, but their attitude was lovely and truly admirable. Actually, besides this part, there were many others that brought me to tears. Everyone is trying so hard. I was really moved.

I really love, and agree with, a line from the film: don’t see yourself as that important. After the screening, the director said that only after making the film did they understand that it wasn’t just us who had run into difficulties. I, too, only then realized that feminist movements across East Asia seem to have hit a bottleneck over the past decade, including the “cyber feminism” phenomenon at home. The documentary laid out, in a very calm way, the confusion and pain I’ve lived through these years, and it showed me that so much pain can be expressed through words and images. I used to live in Beijing. Many years ago I met one of the Five Sisters at a bar, and I’ve followed her on social media ever since. Seeing that she has now married her wife overseas, I’m truly happy for her, and I know none of it has been easy. I met her around 2016, when I had just graduated from university and was encountering the feminist movement for the first time. In 2020, as someone who was almost a bystander, I watched friends in Beijing open a space for sexual minorities and saw the whole process: being reported and forced to close, reopening under a new name, and now being threatened and facing closure once again. It’s all been like a rollercoaster. I’m angry and I’m sad, and beyond that I don’t know what I can do. Like that line in the film, I often tell myself: don’t see yourself as that important. Early this year, some friends and I made a deck of cards about intimacy and relationships in minority communities. As soon as we had crowdfunded enough start-up money online, the person in charge got a call from the police questioning them, and was barred from selling the cards. This time, too, I didn’t know what I could do. It felt as if all our effort had been for nothing. But later a friend told me they’d seen people using our cards at a queer bar somewhere in the southwest, and I was still so happy. At least someone saw it! In that moment I felt that my small efforts, and this self that isn’t so important in the great current of history, have real power!

As a period of time that means something to me, I want to mark 2015–2026, the stretch when I truly took part in feminist action in China. From the film, I want to mark the Feminist Five’s smiles as they recounted what they went through after their arrest. There’s an inspiring resilience in them.

The Feminist Five singing and dancing really moved me, because even in a desperate political environment, they still didn’t give up. It made me feel that there’s more hope, even in painful moments.