Synopsis.
This is a collection of real life stories of women in China and the horrific and inhumane effects of political control on their personal lives. They are all retold by Xinran, who was a radio presenter on Chinese State radio during the 80's and 90's. It is also her story as well.
Xinran ( a name she took for herself meaning "with pleasure") started an evening radio programme called "Words on the Night Breeze" which radically for the time (early 80s) included a 'women's mailbox slot'. "In Words on the Night Breeze I was trying to open a little window, a tiny hole, so that people could allow their spirits to cry out and breathe after the gunpowder-laden atmosphere of the previous forty years."
The response from women all around China was overwhelming and she was told and sent thousands of heartbreaking and shocking stories of women's lives - repeated sexual abuse, gang rape, forced marriages, brutal treatment of children and enforced separation of families for the good of the state.
She has selected a variety of the most poignant and moving, and tells them to us along with her own story, which is equally moving. She was separated from her parents by the state and sent to live with her grandmother when she was one month old, and didn't see her mother until she was five. Her parents were subsequently imprisoned as suspected reactionaries, and she and her brother were virtually imprisoned themselves, spending five years in a school for 'polluted' children.
The collection of stories are from the ten years Xinran spent travelling the country talking to women from all walks of life - the daughters of wealthy families, the wives of party officials, children of the survivors of the Cultural Revolution, homeless street scavengers, women of isolated mountain villages.
Opinion
Although it follows in a similar vein to Wild Swans, The Good Women of China is completely different. It is many women's stories from all over China, from all different echelons of Chinese society rather than just the lives of particular families. It is part autobiographical - Xinran's life, her work and her family are all part of the story. Her personality and opinions feature strongly as she muses about what women believe in China and tries to understand their lives. I liked the way Xinran brings them all together with her own past and with her recollections of how she travels to hear their stories. It adds an intimacy and a purpose to what could be just a disparate collection of harrowing tales. But at the same time, Xinran's presence and her feelings are sometimes overly intrusive rather than letting the stories and the emotions stand for themselves.,
To me the most disturbing thing is that all of these stories are recent. These terrible things have been happening to women and children in my lifetime. They are not something we can relegate to the distant past. This was the early 90's and so-called "openness and reconstruction" were the political in-words, but it is very apparent that after years of physical, sexual and emotional repression that it was very difficult for women to talk about themselves or even understand that they could ever expect to experience more than misery and unhappiness.
Eventually the conflict between what she knew and what she was permitted to say, caused Xinran to give up journalism and in 1997 she left China for England. She wanted to write the women's stories down and tell them to the women of the West. A wise old mentor in China had advised her "If you don't write these stories down, your heart will be filled up and broken by them."
The resulting book is a brave and unique collection of heartbreaking stories from a very brave and unique woman.
-Liz F
What the Critics Say.
NZ Herald
reviewer - Margie Thomson, 11/8/02
"The thousands of New Zealanders who were moved by Wild Swans will find The Good Women of China more than worthy of a read....One of the book's most shocking aspects is that this is all recent history. The incident with the 12-year-old slave-bride happened in 1989. We can therefore place ourselves at the time these stories are happening, and marvel at the different life experiences of people living a telephone call away. This is a repelling, compelling snapshot of modern China, an eye-opening account of our own time, and an insight into the psyche of a ravaged people."
The Observer
reviewer -Geraldine Bedell , July 21 02
"The book contains stories of rape and child abuse, forced marriages and sexual humiliations. Its author, a former radio journalist called Xinran, contextualises where she can but her 15-odd stories focus on her subjects' emotions, with the result that you are left wondering how representative their experiences really are. In some cases she has had only brief encounters with the women described, so that her account lacks the texture of, say, Wild Swans ...Since the book appears in translation, it is also hard to judge whether certain awkwardnesses in the writing are in the original, from the English, or are the necessary consequence of cultural differences. ...But enough complaining already. The subject matter of The Good Women of China demands attention. .The Good Women of China recently sold to a Chinese publisher. The reaction in Britain is predictable: it will shock and sell. The reaction there will be much more interesting to watch."
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差点就买了， 不过好像看这种风格的书有点自虐哦。