The Double SHIFT

Three women from different walks of life reflect on their relationship with domestic labour.

- CHANDREYEE RAY

I’m visiting a close friend’s home for Chinese New Year. A Marvel movie is playing on TV—I have lost track of which one, but it’s pre-Thanos—and the kids are climbing over one another from their spots on the living room floor to get the best view. I stuff another pineapple tart into my mouth and turn to my friend, but she has disappeared into the kitchen.

I go looking for her and find a familiar sight. Women of all ages crowd around the kitchen counter. As they chat, they are transferring food from serving plates into storage boxes, taking turns to wash and dry dishes, then putting them back where they belong.

A teenaged girl is instructed by her mother to retrieve a big bowl from inside the fridge, which turns out to be brimming with glistening balls of tang yuan and sweet milky broth. Her mother starts to spoon the dessert into smaller bowls, all the time showing her daughter where the nice crockery reserved for guests is kept, reminding her that it’s not for daily use.

In Asian culture, guests are treated with great reverence. They are to be served the finest of delicacies and never expected to lift a finger. Still, watching them milling about in their host’s kitchen, doing what they could to help lighten her load, it strikes me that even as guests, women cannot escape their duties of domestic labour. Unspoken and inherited, it is the thread that defines modern womanhood.