topics: |  biography | culture | sociology | china

Book Review

One of the most powerful and thought-provoking books I had read in a long
time.

    'My name is Xinran,' I had said at the beginning of the first broadcast.
    '"Xinran" means "with pleasure". "Xin xin ran zhang kai le yan," wrote"
    Zhu Ziqing in a poem about spring: "With pleasure, nature opened its eyes
    to new things."' p.2

Xinran became a radio jockey in Nanjing after Deng Hsiao-Ping's opening up and before the clampdown post-Tiananmen in 1989. In 1989, she starts hosting the late night radio program Words on the Night Breeze, which becomes immensely popular. Women started to relate to her program and soon she's getting as many as 100 letters a week, many of them telling intimate stories of their lives. Despite the constraints of the Communist Party, she managed to read out many of the letters with the stories of many women, and eventually to open up her program for women to call in with their stories, though the broadcast has a ten second lag, during which a censor in the control desk is ready to cut off the caller.

Initially, she herself is naive, and not very aware of the lives of many Chinese women. But she is a sensitive listener, and women find it comforting to tell her their stories, often hidden also from other family members (e.g. Warden Ding). A number of amazing (and often horrifying) tales emerge, and Xinran becomes a well-known presenter, and manages to do well with the political bureaucracy also.

Though she describes the lives of so many other women, she is reluctant to tell her own story; the book opens as if she is not going to tell you anything at all. It is only in chapter four that the reader is told that she is not single - in fact, she has a son, PanPan, and a maid looks after him while she's at work. There is no mention of a husband anywhere. Much later you realize that there are no others; the history of PanPan remains a mystery. In a biography in The Guardian, we find that she divorced her Chinese husband in 2002, and is now married to English literary critic Toby Eady.

Time and again while reading the book I kept on thinking how so much of the stories are also true of India and many other non-western nations, though some of the special situations of the Party excesses and extreme lack of individual freedom have not been as pronounced in India.

Woman's equality in the Chinese revolution

The Chinese revolution sloganeered about the equality of women and men.  In
the work units, they are assigned equal work and there were no marks of
rank.  Yet, somehow, the leaders who emerge are almost all male.
In the party conception of society, marriage is viewed as something that is
necessary for propagating the race.  Senior leaders are assigned "smart"
young wives by the party, and their old wives who were left behind in the
villages are later given a pension.  In Ha Jin's Waiting, the bosses at the
hospital where Manna is a nurse decide that she may be a good wife for the
powerful Commissar.  Women to went along with this arrangement for its
practical benefits.  But in the end, women need emotions, and perhaps men
too, and this leaves a tremendous vacuum in their otherwise materially
fulfilled lives.  In the story of The woman whose marriage was arranged by the revolution,
one such woman is married off by the party to a senior officer.  Today, her
husband tells her:
	I'm like a faded grey cloth, not good enough to make trousers out of,
	to cover the bed, or even to be used as a dishcloth.  All I am good
	for is wiping mud off feet. 109
and this becomes her self-image as well.

The story is the same also for the western countries of the nineteenth
century.   The notion of a "good woman" has been central to the construction
of societies in milleniums of "civilized" life.   In the urban areas today,
we see it giving way to the "Cosmopolitan" woman, much like the Jin Shuai,
the fashionable young woman that Xinran talks to at the University:
   X: "Do you consider yourself to be a good woman?"
   J: (after a pause) No. ... I don't have the necessary gentleness and
      conscientiousness.  Good Chinese women are conditioned to behave in
	a soft meek manner, and they bring this behaviour to bed. As a
	result, their husbands say they have no sex appeal and the women are
	convinced that the fault is their own.
Instead of being "good women", these young women sell their companionship
as "personal secretaries" and "escorts" to live in hotels and buy good
clothes.  (J: "Don't get me wrong though, these girls aren't necessary
selling their bodies.")

However, despite the modernity of their veneer, desire for love and
motherhood has not deserted these women (as in the west), and their pursuit
continues amid the rootlessness that results from rejecting the tradition.

Our ancestors were slaves...

In the opening story, a woman has been kidnapped and sold as a bride to an
old man in a remote village.  She is barely twelve, and because many such
captured brides run away, she is kept in heavy chains.  In fact, many of
the traditions across so much of the world may relate to the fact,
underscored by Theodore Zeldin, that for the vast majority of humans,
our ancestors were overwhelmingly slaves.
Indeed, in ancient China, the architecture emphasized that women were
raised in the part of the house where tools and slaves slept, while the son
and father slept in the master's room.

The stories, especially the horror ones with gangrapes and the grimness of no
possibility of recourse - haunted me for quite a while.

Excerpts

1: My journey towards the stories of Chinese women

[She gets a letter from a boy in a village 150 miles away, mentioning how an
old crippled man of sixty who has recently bought a young wife.
   I think then girl must have been kidnapped.  This happens a lot around
   here, but many of the girls escape later.  The old man is afraid his wife
   will run off, so he has tied a thick iron chain around her.  Her waist has
   been rubbed raw by the heavy chain and blood seeps through to her
   clothes.  I think it will kill her.  Please save her. 2

Early one spring morning in 1988, I rode my Flying Pigeon bicycle through
Nanjing [to my sixteenth floor office] on the forbidding, 21 story modern
building of the radio station.  I preferred to climb the stairs rather than
take the unreliable lift.  [The lift repairman is a very popular person in
the office].  After reaching her office, she realizes that the bicycle key is
still left on the lock. 2

When she takes up the case, the police are powerless to help, since the
village society condones this behaviour.  Eventually, the head of
agricultural supplies helps, by threatening to cut off fertilizer for the
entire village.  The villagers are sullen, shaking their fists at X and three
policemen as they approach the old man's and free the girl.  She turns out to
have been only 12, and she has indeed been kidnapped.  She is sent back to
her home in Xining, a 22 hr train journey.  Her parents there, meanwhile, had
run up a debt of 10K Yuan searching for her. 4

2: The girl who kept a fly as a pet

Hongxue's father starts raping her while her mother is out visiting a
neighbour.

For the first few days, he only rubbed my body with his hands. Later, he
started to force his tongue into my mouth.  Then he began shoving at me with
the hard thing on his lower body.  12

She fits a lock on her door, but he doesn't care waking up all the neighbours
saying that she's asleep too soundly and he needs to access something in the
room.

Eventually, her mother finds out, but in the end she says, "For the security
of the whole family, you must put up with it.  Otherwise what will we do?" 14

In the end, she falls sick repeatedly partly because she finds the hospital
more soothing.  She has no desire to live.  The doctors are very worried
about her getting further infected, and eventually, she rubs a dead fly on a
wound and dies of septicemia.

3: University student

[Jin Shuai: well-dressed, confident, university student, well-known for her
initiative, modern ideas, and opinions.  name = "golden general".]

Jin Shuai looked more like a PR executive than a student. ... she commanded
attention.  39

   X: "Do you consider yourself to bea good woman?"
   J: (after a pause) No.
   [X asks why]
   J: "Waitress, two more Dragon Well teas please." The confidence w which JS
placed her order displayed an ease born of wealth.  "I don't have the
necessary gentleness and conscientiousness.
      Good Chinese women are conditioned to behave in a soft meek manner,
and they bring this behaviour to bed. As a result, their husbands say they
have no sex appeal and the women are convinced that the fault is their
own. ... in the men's eyes, there's no such thing as a good woamn.

That old man Gu Hongming at the end of the Qing dynasty said that 'one man is
best suited to four women, as a teapot is best suited to four cups.  41

Money makes men bad; badness makes women money.  [saying] 42

Don't think that we're all poor students here.  Many of us young women live
in style without a penny from our parents.  Some girls couldn't even afford
to eat meat in the canteen when they first came, but now they wear cashmere
and jewels.  They take taxis everywhere and stay in hotels.  Don't get me
wrong though, these girls aren't necessary selling their bodies.  42

rich men want to parade a "personal secretary" or "escort" with learning.
Three levels of companionship:
  1. accompanying men to restaurants, nightclubs and karaoke bars
  2. to theatres, cinema etc.
     [of course, letting these men fumble with your clothes is part of the
     deal]
  3. being at a man's beck and call night and day, also for sex.  If you're
     this sort of personal secy, you don't sleep in the university dorm
     unless your boss goes home.  Even then, the man mostly lets you stay on
     in the hotel room he has rented, to make it easier for him to find you
     when he returns.  All your meals, clothes, lodging and food are taken
     care of.  No one dares to cross you when you're so close to the boss. "
She poured herself more tea. 44

How can all these men start a company without a secretary -- wouldn't they
lose face?  But a secy for only 8 hrs a day is not enough, someone has to be
there to fix everything all the time.  Add to this the law of sexual
attraction, and opportunities abound for young girls.
Fashionably dressed young women rush about between stuffy govt departments
and quicken the pace of economic development in China.  43

[personal secy's also needed by foreigners.  must speak a FL]

"Does this really go on?" I stuttered.
JS was stunned by my ignorance. 44

[story of Ying'er, talented student, played any kind of instrument: met Mr
Wu, Taiwanese company director who was struggling to set up office in China.
Ying'er  sorted out the red tape with her resourcefulness, pleasant manner,
and good contacts.  Wu rented her a suite in a 4star hotel, but was ver
gentlemanly.

one night Ying'er calls JS to tell her how happy she is.  Ying'er has a wife,
she knows, but he's very gentle and loving, never gets angry.

But few months later, she meets Ying'er - has an emaciated look.  Wu's wife
gave him an ultimatum, and Ying'er was sure Wu couldn't do without her, but
he finally decided to leave Ying'er.  He paid her US $10K as a token of
gratitude for her help with their affairs in Nanjing. p. 44-45]

Ying'er asked for some time alone w Wu to ask three q's.  a) was his decision
final?  Wu said it was.  b) had he meant his earlier declarations of
affection?  He said he had.  c) how could his feelings have changed?  Wu
replied brazenly that the world was in a constant state of flux; then
announced that her quota of 3 q's was up.

Ying'er returned to her life as an escort, and later marries an American.  In
her first letter from the US, she wrote:

   "Never think of man as a tree whose shade you can rest in.  Women are just
   fertiliser, rotting away to make the tree strong... There is no real love." 45

JS: Why do Chinese men think that to day the words "I love you" to their
wives undermines their status as a man? 47

As far as I am concerned, there are no men in China.  47

JS: When men have been drinking, they come out with a set of definitions for
women.   Lovers are "swordfish", tasty but with sharp bones.  "Personal
secretaries" are "carp", the longer you "stew" them, the more flavour they
have.  Other men's wives are "Japanese puffer fish", trying a mouthful could
be the end of you, but risking death is a source of pride.
   And their own wives are "salt cod"... keeps for a long time.  When there's
no other food, salt cod is cheap and convenient, and makes a quick meal." 48

Women as fish

swordfish: lovers, tasty but with sharp bones.

carp: Personal secretaries.  the longer you "stew" them, the more flavour
	they have.

japanese puffer fish: other men's wives.  trying a mouthful could be the end
	of you, but risking death is a source of pride.

salt cod: own wives - keeps for a long time.  When there's no other food,
	salt cod is cheap and convenient, and makes a quick meal."

In the history of Chinese architecture:  Many centuries passed before a small
minority of women could move from the side chambers of the family courtyard
(where tools were kept and the servants slept) to cchambers beside the main
rooms where the master and his sons lived. 49

4: The Scavenger woman (mother)

[Along the walls of the radio station are the huts of the scavenger women.
One of these huts, the smallest, is very nicely made with plastic strips, and
very neatly kept.  ]

[at the office young woman broadcaster Mengxing loses a bet with old hand Big
Li, after she disbelieves his claim that he knows a scavenger woman who
regularly visits an expensive nightclub, covered in jewels and drinking
french brandy at a hundred yuan a glass.
they stake out the club for several nights, and indeed Mengxing meets this
woman, who tells her while sipping whisky, how she makes 900 yuan a month
from selling rubbish.  Mengxing's own salary is abt 400 yuan, and now she
loses her bicycle to Big Li. 52]

[Xinran has a maid - an illiterate village girl, who can't open the lid of
the rice cooker, or throws gourmet pickled eggs into the trash thinking they
are rotten.  Once she pointed to a litter bin outside, saying this is where
she had been "posting" the letters Xinran leaves.  But she is loving and
takes good care of Panpan, the son Xinran is raising alone. 53]

Careless maids had let children fall from 4th-floor windowsills; others had
put children in washing machines for a wash, or shut them in the fridge
during a game of hide and seek.  54

Why journalists get invited by officials to their parties:
All officials know the ancient Tang dynasty saying:
   Water supports a boat, but it can also capsize it.
Ordinary people were the water; and officials the boat. 59

Old people should have a space of their own in which to weave a beautiful old
age for themselves.  62

[The neat scavenger woman turns out to be an educated woman, a foreign
language instructor at a university.  She lives as a scavenger woman because
she wants to be close to her son, who is a senior party functionary in the
city.  his wife and he have their own lives, and no time for her; they don't
even know she lives here like this.]

5: Mothers after the earthquake

"There are thirty-six virtues, but to be without heirs is an evil that negates
them all."
A woman who has had a son is irreproachable.  65
[when Xiao Yao was in labour, she was in a room with seven other women, and
her husband refused to shift her to a private room.  as soon as she gave
birth to a son, she got her room. ]
I guessed that having given birth to a boy was one reason for her glow of
well-being.

The Tangshan earthquake of 1976 was notorious for exemplifying the complete
breakdown of communication in China at the time - Mao and Zhouenlai and the
military leader Zhu De had recently died and the govt was busy with their
deaths - and completely unaware of the earthquake (which killed 300K
people).  It wasn't until a man from Tangshan went all the way to Beijing
that it was known - even then he was initially taken to be a lunatic. 67

The Xinhua news agency found out abt the earthquake from foreign news
agencies, who knew based on monitoring stations abroad.

[visits orphanage set up by mothers who had lost their children in the quake] 68

Sometimes I can't breathe for missing them [Warden Ding; dtr killed herself
after the e-quake; she had been gangraped and couldn't put those memories
behind her; also husband died.  the story she tells xinran she hasn't told
anyone else, even her son doesn't know. ]

6: What Chinese women believe

Since religious freedom was declared in 1983, one household could have
several altars dedicated to different gods.  Most people who prayed only did
so to ask for wealth or other benefits... one grandparent was Buddhist and
the other was a Taoist and were constantly arguing, while the granddaughter
was Christian and had set up a cross.  The grandparents always scolded her,
saying that she was cursing them to an early death. 86

retired woman cadre who managed to reconcile devotion to the Communist Party
with a strong faith in Fongxiang Gong (Scent and Fragrance qigong) - a kind
of qigong where the idea is to cause the master to emit a fragrance by which
youy inhale his goodness and build up the strength of your body.  87

At home, believe in your own gods and do what you like; outside, believe in
the Party and be careful what you do. 87

[Xinran sees two young girls outside a church; she thinks they may be there
because Christianity is fashionable.  They say they don't believe now, but
will believe when they are forty.]

"If I'm rich, I won't believe.  If I'm still this poor, I'll believe."
"So what religioun are you going to believe in?"
"That'll depend on what relivion is in fashion then." 90

7: The woman who loved women

[Q. on Homosexualism, posed by a woman on the live phone, fails to be cut by
the censor.  So it goes on live and Xinran must handle it.  Within seconds,
the control room beyond the glass panel becomes crowded with top station
functionaries, whose careers area also threatened should the program be
botched.  However, Xinran manages to answer it within the party lines. 92-5]

[Then the caller manages to get her home number and keeps calling her at
night, until she refuses to pick up the phone.  Then one day a female RJ at
Ma'ashan attempts suicide blaming Xinran in her suicide note for spurning her
love.  This note arrives by post a couple of weeks later.  However, the woman,
Taoghong, survives, and then comes to meet Xinran.   She is dressed in male
clothes (not very unusual for women in China), and brings her sex toys and
pamphlets on women's sexual pleasure (very unusual).  They go to

Cock Crow temple, Nanjing.  Bells can be heard from a great distance. 101

Taohong is an only child - her mother died during childbirth - and her
father, who wanted a son, raised her as a boy.

Taohong wants to call Xinran as her lover, but X refuses.  Old saying:
"If you can't make someone happy, don't give her hope" 104

The spear hits the bird that sticks its head out. 107

8: marriage arranged by the revolution

Wife of senior Party official on a long phone message:
My husband says [to her face] I'm like a faded grey cloth, not good enough to
make trousers out of, to cover the bed, or even to be used as a dishcloth.
All I am good for is wiping mud off feet. 109

[In her youth she had been luckier than other girls, many of whome had their
marriages arranged in the cradle or were betrothed by middle school.  The
unluckiest would become junior wives or concubines... the parents had the
final say in choosing their marriage partner. 110-1]

The Three Submissions and Four Virtues

    Submission to your father, then your husband, and then your son.
    Virtues of fidelity, physical charm, propriety in speech and action,
	diligence in housework.
	[
	Confucius Li chi: three submissions
		未嫁从父: obey her father as a daughter
		既嫁从夫: obey her husband as a wife
		夫死从子: obey her sons in widowhood
			(Women are like shoes beneath a man's foot)

	Pan Chao (d. 116 CE), in her Instructions to Women (N\"u-chieh), combined
		the three submissions with the four virtues.
		妇德: morality
		妇言: proper speech
		妇容: modest manner
		妇功: diligent work
	three submissions, four virtues
		 三从四德 san cong si de ; san ts'ung ssu te
	  "married daughters are like spilled water"]

Women had been trained to do the housework without setting foot outside the
house.  For a woman to study, read and write, discuss affairs of state like
a man, and even advise men, was a heresy to most Chinese at that time. 111

Not only was I allowed to go to school - albeit a girl's school - I was also
allowed to eat at the same table as my parents' friends and discuss politics
and current affairs. 111

In the revolutionary times, she reads a book called the Red Star and
decides to join the revolution.  She is assigned to
several work units, where men and women wear the same clothes and do the
same things, and leaders wear no symbols of rank.  In this atmosphere, female
students, cultivated and brigh, were treated like princesses.  she in
particular, becomes very popular as a woman who can sing, dance,
and play music.  Senior officers always want to dance with her.  She was
always smiling and laughing and was called "the lark".   112-3

The chicken in the coop has grain but the soup pot is near;
the wild crane has none but its world is vast. 113

On her 18th birthday an officer calls her. "Are you prepared to complete
any mission the Party organization gives you?"
"Of course!" I replied unhesitatingly. 113

She is then sent to another unit some way off, where the senior officer
greets her and says she is to be his secretary.  She is tired and he asks her
to rest in a room.

Later in the night, she wakes up when he joins her in the bed.  He tells her
"This is your mission".  The next day, the Party organizes a wedding for
them.

   That officer is my husband now.

   My youth was cut short, my hopes crushed, and everything beautiful about
   me used up by a man.

The authorities refused permission to broadcast this phone call, because it
would damage the people's perception of our leaders. 115

9: My mother

Many men who joined the revolution left wives and children behind in their
villages... Once they were in senior positions, the Party matched them with
new wives because their first wives were trapped under enemy occupation.
Majority of the new wives were students who believed fervently in the
ideology of the Party and hero-worshipped the gun-toting men in it.  117

After 1950, many of these first wives of some of the high-ranking officials now
trailed into Beijing with their children in tow.  The government was
promoting sexual equality, women's liberation and monogamy, so this was a
dilemma. 117

Eventually a policy was prepared recognizing the political position of these
women.  They were given special rights and an allowance, but were to continue
to live in their own villages.  They rarely used the possibility of their
privileged position because it would bring back painful memories of their
delinquent husbands. 118.

X's mother comes from one of a large capitalist family in Nanjing - her
grandfather had many factories and owned a vast property south of central
Nanjing nearly three km wide.  He had helped Chiang-Kai Shek, and donated a
large property to Mao's deputy Liu Shaoqi.  But Shaoqi fell out of favour
with Mao and was imprisoned.  Later, his grandfather also served a long
prison term.

Her mother, and her father who was an intellectual, were constantly
fighting the prejudices caused by their 'Black' capitalist backgrounds.
(Her father's dad had worked for a foreign company, GEC, for 45 years).

Her mother worked as team leader on projects for building several military
production machines.  However, in the photos and in the documents, she was
always in a corner, never receiving the credit for the work.

In China in the 60s and 70s, families were rarely together.  X was raised by
her grandparents, and did not remember seeing her mother till she was
five. 124

10: The woman who waited 45 years

Chinese marriages are based on practicality, and any feeling there is has
developed later.
But what most women are yearning for is the feeling.  That is why you read
about so many tragic love stories in Chinese history.  127

Jingyi and Gu Da - lovers in Qinghua.  Meet again in 1994 at the 83d
anniversary of Qinghua University.

I hate lying because I believe it shortens life. 135

Women are like water and men like mountains. - Jingyi 146

[Jingyi's story reminds me of Lin Kong in Ha Jin's Waiting]

11: The Guomindang general's daughter

[One of the most tragic stories.  Shilin is with relatives, and when her
prosperous family leaves for Taiwan, she is left behind with her cousin.
They are adopted by a kindly family whom the meet on the road, but in the
end, her parentage comes out.  After this, the mere q "Who is your father?"
makes her unstable, and men realize they can rape her after this.  She
eentually loses her mind completely.  The family that adopted her are also
all imprisoned and end up with immense woes]

Yangzhou is a picturesque riverside town close to Nanjing.  Intellectual
tradition.
Food specialties famous all over China: Steamed veg dumplings, dried turnip
  and stewed tofu sheets with ginger.  154

12: The Childhood I can't leave behind

[Xinran describes how when she's seven, the Red Guards searches their
house. ]
A great fire was lit in our courtyard on to which were thrown my father's
books, my grandparents' precious traditional furniture and my toys.  Her
beloved pleats are cut off by a girl who calls them a "petit-bourgois
hairstyle".  168

[One day she burns her hand] I still find it hard to understand how that
doctor could let our family's political status prevent him from coming to my
aid. 169

both her parents are arrested for being upper class, and now they are raised
as "polluted children", spat on and cursed by classmates in school.

Our clothes were streaked with gobs of spit or phlegm 171
An erstwhile friend spits on her: "My mother says your grandfather was helped
those horrible English people eat Chinese flesh and drink Chinese blood.  He
was the very very worst of all bad people.  You're his grandchild, so you
can't be a good person either." 171

13: The woman whose father does not know her

Another horrendous story.  Hua'er, the daughter from a talented family - both
parents were university professors, but their crime is that they are
japanese.  Xinran interviews her in the West Hunan women's prison.

The father is arrested, and the elder sister Shu joins study classes for
which may help her rise through the red army ranks.  But in these classes,
she is being routinely gang-raped, which she tries to hide from her
mother.

Eventually Hua'er herself, at age 11, is gang-raped, also in a study
group. When she comes back home, her mother and sister realize.  The next day
her mother commits suicide.  Four days later, her father comes back, but he
has completely lost his mind and doesn't recognize any of them.  Her sister
Shu becomes pregnant and doesn't know what to do - eventually she is labelled
as a "bad woman" and a "broken shoe" - and is shunned.  In fact, Hua'er is
currently in prison on similar charges - "sexual delinquency".

14: A fashionable woman

[A rising businesswoman and marketing star, Zhou Ting.  In her youth she had
married a man who lost all fingers of his right hand.  It turned out this man
was a incorrigible adulterer.]

A man battering his wife or beating his children is considered to be 'putting
his house in order' by many Chinese. 201

  ZT: My husband said that too much learning had spoiled me.
  X:  It was Confucius who said that lack of talent in a woman was a
	virtue. 201

After she divorces her repeatedly adulterous husband, she is kicked out of
the house, though she was the working member.
She Goes to meet the president of the trade union, a woman of about fifty.
   She [President] said in a kind voice, "It's very easy for a woman.  Just
   find another man with a flat and you'll have everything you need."
   X: "The president of the trade union said that?
   ZT: "Word for word".  205

Her next lover, Wei Hai, is a kind, gentle man, and she has a very
pleasurable two years with him.  After this, they decide to marry to avoid
prohlems with the Party.  However, the moment the marriage is fixed, he
suddenly disappears without a trace.  She is save from the verge of suicide
by gas.

Rectntly, ZT has planned marriage to a Shanghai business magnate, who is
impotent, and was marrying her for her skills, and she because it would be
fine to not have him touch her.  He gives her some stock certificates as an
engagement gift.

Despite her wordliness, when her long-lost lover, Wei Hai, turns up at this
point - he comes to attend one of her sales seminars - ZT takes him in,
though she has to renege on her marriage plans and return the stock
certificates.

Why does he stay with Wei Hai?  Because she still remembers the happiness she
had had with him; those are her happiest memories.

Emotionally, men can never be like women; they will never be able to
understand us.  Men are like mountains; they only know the ground beneath
their feet, and the trees on their slopes.  But women are like water. 211
[also said by Jingyi]

Review

from by Angela Lambert, The Guardian

Persecuted under Mao's Cultural Revolution, Xinran Hue later trained as a
broadcaster and became China's first radio agony aunt. The poignant stories
she heard, from formerly voiceless ordinary women, have been collected in a
new book, The Good Women of China

...
Once the programme was launched, tens of thousands listeners wrote to
her. Every evening between 10pm and midnight she broadcast their stories,
creating for the first time a true picture of the daily lives of Chinese
women. An English friend said of her, "I've never known anyone who could
listen so hard!" and Xinran listened as the past poured through her
headphones. Nothing like this had been heard before - tales of incest, child
abuse and neglect, forced marriage, rape - the deep sorrows hidden beneath
Chinese women's apparently stoical exterior. They had learned to be
submissive and complicit or just blind themselves to these matters, and for a
long time there had been a great silence. After decades of propaganda, the
audience was hearing the truth about themselves.

Xinran was born in Beijing in July 1958 and named Xue. (She took the name
Xinran [shin-ran] later - the word means "giving pleasure".) China was at its
poorest but both her parents came from privileged families and even after
handing over much of their property to the Communists their wealth was still
evident. They were cultivated and westernised. During the Cultural Revolution
her grandfather was singled out for persecution and imprisoned, despite being
over 70. Her mother's family were also prosperous, owning vast properties in
Nanjing, in south-east China. In the early 1950s, when the Chinese army
carried out its first purge, Xinran's mother, then in her teens, was
relegated to the "Black" class of capitalist descendants. She was sentenced
to field-labour and re-education at the military academy. There she married
one of her instructors, a gifted engineer who spoke six languages.

A year after her parents' marriage, Xinran was born. When she was a month old
she was sent to live with her grandmother "because the government persuaded
people that they shouldn't devote their life, energy and talents to their
family but to the motherland. Between the 1950s and 1985 many couples were
separated and sent to poor areas to rebuild the new China. Everyone accepted
this, my parents the same as anyone else." She didn't learn her parents'
history until she was in her 30s.

She remembers her grandmother's house in Beijing: "Big yard, small lake,
little wooden bridge, water flowing. Everything was very natural. She had
seven grandsons and only one grand-daughter, so that made me a bit
different. She was very thin, a tiny woman with glasses, always beautifully
dressed in the finest silk; but she didn't touch me a lot because in Chinese
custom this isn't important - what matters is the spiritual things your
family give you." Xinran was looked after by servants, but her grandmother
devoted a lot of time to her and told her stories under a trellis on which
grapes grew. She didn't go back to her mother for six and a half years and
when she did she didn't recognise her: "I called her 'Auntie'."

Soon after family life had resumed, Xinran's father was accused by the Red
Guards of being a "reactionary technical authority". Her parents were charged
with being "representative of feudalism, capitalism and revisionism". That
was when their house was burnt. "Two weeks later my parents were sent to
prison and I didn't talk to them again for nearly 10 years." Because of their
parents' "crimes" Xinran and her little brother were sent to a "Black
school", which was more like a prison than a school. "They gave us orders -
'Get up!' - 'Go to sleep!' - for years I didn't hear a sentence more than
five words long." She learned to sew warm clothes and make shoes for her
brother. They were in a group of about 14 "Black" children who were not
allowed to contact others. If they did they would be spat at and beaten. She
says they became dirty and silent, fought a lot and became "like a
machine. This was hard for me. I came from a beautiful home and I couldn't
understand why my life had fallen down.


In her 20s she did two degrees - one in English and international relations
and a second in computer theory - before studying international law in the
army's political department.... In 1988

The cautious liberalisation of China was beginning. She says: "Deng Xiaoping
had said we should open our doors to the whole world; but people had been in
back rooms for so long that when the door suddenly opened, no one could see
through it or knew what lay outside." Skilled and sensitive people were
needed to run the new-style media, and in particular broadcasting. In 1988 a
competitive examination was held to select 14 out of 14,000 candidates. By
now a beautiful and highly-qualified young woman, Xinran came second and was
given a job. In 1989 she started at Henan radio station as head of the
evening broadcast team. She says, "At the beginning, everything was an
experiment, because before 1988 there had been only one voice for radio and
TV. So before we had any idea what was allowed, we tested it out: very
carefully at first, gradually getting bolder." The move brought a personal
problem: "My son Panpan had been born the previous May. It meant leaving him,
but this wasn't hard because you got three months off and after that you had
to go back to work. I had a live-in nanny so there was always someone to keep
him interested. He was never alone, so he didn't ask for me. In China people
didn't think children had these feelings."

In 1989 Xinran began broadcasting the programme that was to make her an
icon. Within three or four months she was getting well over 100 letters a day
- mostly from women - telling their problems. She would tell stories from
their letters or they would talk to her on the phone, and in between she
played music, chose bits of books to read aloud and ended by wishing them
good, happy dreams. Soon she was filling the two hours before midnight.

When Xinran first arrived in England she lived in north-west London and for
the first three months worked as a cleaner in an Indian corner shop from
6.30-8.30; then for the rest of the morning taught Chinese or learned
English. In the afternoon she did Chinese voice-overs for TV production
companies and in the evenings worked in a Cantonese restaurant as a
waitress. "I wasn't short of money but I really wanted to understand how
difficult life was for Chinese people abroad. I knew I was just doing it for
a short time, but many Chinese women spent years living that kind of life
because in England they felt free and were treated as a woman. Here, if you
carry heavy things in the bus or tube, men will say, 'Oh please, lady, would
you like to take my seat?' In China no one would do that."

Xinran says, "In China, men didn't treat women like full human beings, which
is why my first marriage went wrong. My ex-husband thought he respected me,
but he never believed women had the same value and spirit as men. I didn't
have a childhood, so a lot of things in my nature never came out. In other
people's eyes I was very rigid because of my successful career. Now Toby and
I are married I feel happy. We need time to understand each other because we
come from such different cultures, but it's starting."

author bio

Born: July 19 1958, Beijing, China
Education: 1983-1987 educated at First Military University of People's
	Liberation Army
Married: In China (one son, born 1988), divorced; February 2002, Toby Eady.
Career: 1989-1997 programme presenter and producer with Henan Broadcasting
	and Jiangsu Broadcasting.
Publications: Articles in Chinese newspapers and broadcasting journals; July
	2002 The Good Women of China.

see also: http://ricklibrarian.blogspot.com/2006/06/good-women-of-china-hidden-voices-by.html

[wikipedia:]

Xuē Xīnrán (薛欣然, born Beijing 1958), is a Chinese radio journalist, who
hosted the very popular radio show, Words on the Night Breeze, from Nanjing
radio (1989-1997).  She was one of China's most successful journalists, but
in 1997 she left China moved to London.  Her 10-year-old son Panpan was left
behind with her parents, but joined her after two years.  Initially she did
odd jobs including working as cleaner, but managed to write the Good Women of
China, which became a publishing sensation.

-- blurb
For eight years, Xinran presented a radio programme in China during which she
invited women to call in and talk about themselves. This book is the story of
how Xinran negotiated the minefield of restrictions imposed on Chinese
journalists to reach out to women across the country. It presents the lives
of Chinese women to the West.