Female friendships in popular culture 2: Zhen Huan

While my last post on female friendships was more personal and I touched on how the friendship in 881 reflected my own friendships, this one talks about 4 general lessons about female friendships I picked up from The Legend of Zhen Huan. 

1. The company you choose determines the quality and longevity of your friendship.

People who watch The Legend of Zhen Huan often go away thinking all female characters hate each other, while overlooking an important detail. The friendship between Shen Meizhuang and Zhen Huan pretty much lasted the entire series.

Shen Meizhuang and Zhen Huan were childhood friends and entered the palace together. Yet, even as Zhen Huan gradually won the Emperor's favour and the Emperor started neglecting Mei Zhuang a little, Mei Zhuang stood firm in her friendship with Zhen Huan, refusing to be jealous of her friend.

Image source: mingxing.com

"There will always be another woman in this palace who will earn the Emperor's affections, but I'd rather that woman be you, because I know that you will never harm me."

One of Shen Mei Zhuang's most defining and consistent traits was her loyalty. She was a very principled person by nature, preferring to solidify her position in the inner harem by earning the graces of the Empress Dowager, and stayed away from majority of the fights among the concubines. She was also very clear-minded about where she stood with Zhen Huan. Even as she had a misunderstanding with Zhen Huan due to An Ling Rong's influence, Mei Zhuang chose to allow her friend to say her piece, instead of allowing herself to be influenced by a third party's words so easily.

The bottomline is that if you are friends with the right kind of people, very little will convince them to betray your trust, no matter how competitive the environment or how others choose to stir up conflict between you. Conversely, if you are friends with toxic people, choosing to believe that "friends who bitch together stay together", then it is no surprise if they one day decide to ditch you for a moment of glee or stab you in the back if you are in their way for a promotion.

This is one lesson I wish I had learned very early on in my career and I'm glad I have chosen to distant myself from such people before they can do any further damage. 

2. The Emperor makes women in the inner harem fight each other because it prevents them from figuring out that he is their real enemy.

Consort Hua was the Emperor's favourite concubine, but was barren for years because of a miscarriage that happened years ago. It was later revealed that this was the work of the Emperor, because her brother Nian Geng Yao was getting too powerful, and he had to prevent his sister from having a child so that Nian Geng Yao's influence over the court will not get too big. 

However, he engaged the help of Consort Duan to cover up his misdeeds. He first gave Consort Hua a poisoned scent, 欢宜香, that resulted in her miscarriage (and subsequent infertility), then asked Consort Duan to give her a bowl of harmless herbal soup to give Consort Hua the impression that Consort Duan's soup was the cause of her miscarriage. 

Their animosity did not stop there. Consort Hua, in anger, fed Consort Duan with a poison that left her infertile and sickly for the later part of her life. Consort Hua even used her power in the inner harem to prevent Consort Duan from getting medical help. One can only imagine her devastation when she finally realised moments before her death that the Emperor was the cause of her infertility and years of anguish, and that she had hated the wrong person all her life.

This was not the only instance the Emperor sowed seeds of resentment in the hearts of his concubines that resulted in them fighting each other. In fact, he forced his own wife, the Empress, into killing her own sister, the late Empress Chun Yuan, because she was upset that her own husband spent so much time with her sister when their own son had just died of an illness at 3.

How does this translate into a real world? There isn't a physical enemy in the real world per se, but I'd say that it is the toxic lessons society teaches women that causes them to fight each other in such ways. We were taught that as women, we are only worth as much as our husbands, and that we need to compete for the attention of men. We are taught to always appear nice regardless of our true feelings, resulting in passive-aggressive bullying instead of talking through our problems with each other like grown adults. 

I know that men are also taught a lot of toxic nonsense and that warrants another story for another day, but rigid social norms are the enemy here and we should be addressing the underlying motivations that influence us to be bitchy to one other.

3. When women in an oppressive environment get together, they will realise their lives suck and fight back.

"Don't let that Emperor off!"

Concubine Ning and Zhen Huan were so different yet similar- both were forced by circumstances to marry the Emperor. Both loved the 17th Prince, yet could not be with the man they loved. Both had their lives ruined while being with the Emperor. The snapping point for both women came when the Emperor poisoned 17th Prince to death.

Yet, even though they were rivals in love, Concubine Ning stuck with Zhen Huan throughout her ordeals in the palace. She secretly called for a witness from outside the palace to vouch for Zhen Huan's innocence when Zhen Huan was framed for adultery. They even got rid of the Emperor together as an act of revenge for the 17th Prince. 

While I'm not advocating getting into cahoots with other women to murder, destroy property or set things on fire when things piss you off, women have teamed up to accomplish jaw-dropping (and positive) stuff in real life. 

Women had banded together to get us the right to vote. Women (and many good men) internationally banded together to prevent two pick-up "artists", Roosh V and Julien Blanc, from stepping foot into 26 countries to spread their violent misogynistic rhetoric. Women have also made contributions to their countries behind the scenes in many wars.

Yet, it is much easier to focus on works of fiction like Chinese palace dramas to come to the conclusion that women hate each other by default, and cause nothing except mass destruction when put in the same environment.

4. If you find yourself unable to make friends with other women, do consider that maybe you are the problem.

Consort Hua was widely detested by all other women in the inner harem, and for a good reason- she saw every woman as competition for the emperor's affections and treated all of them, even the Empress, like they were beneath her.

She did have a team, but she did not treat them right. She abandoned one of her team mates, Concubine Li, after Concubine Li went insane from guilt after attempting to poison Zhen Huan (a plan which was orchestrated by Consort Hua). She used her friend Lady Cao by "adopting" the latter's baby daughter, then feeding the poor baby with an irritant so she could get more of the Emperor's attention. No surprises then, that Lady Cao defected to Zhen Huan's side and betrayed Consort Hua by spilling the beans over the evil deeds Consort Hua had committed.

Also, contrast this with people like Shen Mei Zhuang and Consort Jing, who were generally nice people and had no problems maintaining genuine relationships with at least a few other concubines in the palace.

If you can't find any female friends because you constantly find that they are catty, bitchy and full of drama, maybe they seem this way because you are bitchy and full of drama?

Check out this very succinct analysis of why some women don't have any female friends. Many of these reasons include always wanting to be the centre of attention in a group of all men (thus these women alienate other women in the same social group), or because they call themselves "tomboys" think other women's interests are too "shallow and stupid" and prefer hanging out with men whom they think are more "intellectual".

Regardless of the motivations it all boils down to one thing- they hate other women and are constantly suspicious of them.

When these girls hate us, put us down and cling onto men at our expense, we sense their hostility and avoid them. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy for these girls because other women don't want to be friends with toxic people like them.

In summary, I think human relationships are extremely complex and The Legend of Zhen Huan fleshes this out extremely well. It is very easy to over-simplify issues and put things down to theories like "oh, women are just bitchy" "oh, women's friendships are meaningless because they are programmed to value a man's affections more than each other". However, put things into context and really analyse a person's motivations, and you will understand that women approach relationships pretty much the same way men do as we are all human.