Product Description

For eight ground-breaking years, Xinran Xue hosted a daily radio phone in programme for Radio Nanjing during which she discussed women's lives, and invited women to call in and talk about themselves. Broadcast between 10 and 12 at night, "Words on the Night Breeze" soon became famous all over China for its powerful, honest discussions of what it means to be a woman in today's China. It started in 1990, a time when China seemed to be opening up, both for Chinese and for the world. Xinran's programme revealed aspects of women's lives that had never been talked about in public before. She felt as if she was opening a tiny window into a huge fortress whose inhabitants had never before communicated with the outside world. Soon she was receiving over two hundred letters a day from women telling her their stories. She realised that she knew far less than she had thought about what it means to be a Chinese woman and embarked on a journey of discovery to collect their stories. The stories presented here of almost inconceivable suffering rape, sexual abuse, the separation of parents from their children, the suppression of human emotion in order to survive the Communist regime never before have the tortured souls of Chinese women been laid so bare. And yet this is also a book about love, about how, despite cruelty, despite politics, the female urge to nurture and cherish remains. And then there is Xinran herself: an extraordinary woman who, despite her own unhappy past, has given her life to saving the stories of Chinese women from oblivion. 'This is a book from deep in the heart of China. As shocking as it is revealing. An extraordinary and eye-opening read.' - Jon Snow. 'Xinran's 'Good Women of China' are all strong, strikingly resourceful characters who offer unforgettable insights into the past and present of Chinese women's lives.' - "The Times". '"The Good Women of China" demands attention.' - "Observer". '[Xinran] writes compassionately but unsentimentally, dramatising the stories like gripping fiction.' - "Daily Mail".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15402 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Xinran's The Good Women of China continues the tradition of Chinese women writing in recent years. Jung Chang, in Wild Swans, and Aiping Mu, in Vermilion Gate, for example, have written of the effect of recent Chinese history on themselves and their families. However, both of these books, and others like them, have been by women from the upper echelons of Chinese society. What of ordinary Chinese women? How are their voices to be heard?

Xinran worked for eight years as a well-known presenter at a Chinese radio station. As a public figure, she received many letters. Most of them were from women. Moved by the stories she was hearing in the letters, she decided to go in search of more of the truths about Chinese women's lives. What she found was terrible suffering; women who had endured lengthy sexual abuse during the Cultural Revolution, women whose wretched poverty was made more miserable by the dictates of a male-centred society, women who had had their children taken from them or who had lost them in earthquakes and other natural disasters. And, amid all the suffering, she found their capacity to endure and somehow survive.

Xinran is not a diffident or modest journalist. The reader gets to hear quite a lot of people in the course of her book, telling her how honest and humane and famous she is. This is, unsurprisingly, exasperating. However, someone more modest, and with a less robust sense of her own importance and the importance of what she was doing, would not have gathered the material that she has done. She would not have gone to those places she needed to go in order to record the stories in her book. The voices of the many women to whom she listened would not have been heard. --Nick Rennision

Jon Snow
‘This is a book from deep in the heart of China. As shocking as it is revealing…An extraordinary and eye-opening read’

The Times
‘...strong, strikingly resourceful characters who offer unforgettable insights into the past and present of Chinese women’s lives’

Customer Reviews

Heartbreaking
Absolutely wonderful. Xinrans encounters with these incredible women are etched in my heart forever. The girl who kept a fly for a pet and the mothers who endured an earthquake broke my heart. Xinran has brought to life the experiences of many very different women during the chinese cultural revolution with such vibrancy that I can still hear and see them now, several weeks after reading the book. Unputdownable.

A must read!
An utterly compelling book, of the experiences of Chinese women, during the cultural revolution of China. No feminist ear bashing, the author communicates with incredible depth and clarity of feeling, the experiences of the women she knew. Not for the feint hearted, this book will stir deep emotion in you. The best book I have read in 20 years.

Unforgettable and touching
I definitely like this book! I read most stories soaked in tears with a lump in my throat. As a Chinese born in 80s, it's hard for us to understand the older generation and how they suffer and become so numb emotionally. Especially when the truth is blocked by the party which tries to make people "forget" their pain in nowadays' material prosperity and brainwash the newer generation . That's really a shame I have to read stories of my own fellow Chinese women in a foreign language . Though This book is very true. Even though some stories are stunning and extraordinary , it tells the very truth . When I read them I read into those women's heart and I share their suffering and sorrow. Xinran is really a good presenter. Through her Chinese women find a slot to breathe and let their voices heard .

I guess it's a book not for women but also men. The only regret is many Chinese men don't have chance to read it. And I don't know if there are still many of them caring to read .... seeing nowadays Chinese people are almost all after money. Are there still someone who would stop to listen and think in China ? Are there still those good women in China ? Is there still someone like Jingyi who waits 45 years for her love in China ? I don't know the answer because I got this book from my love and he is not Chinese.