Doing an alphabetically inspired reading list can be considered restrictive but it can also lead you to read books that may not necessarily be high on the tbr pile. ‘The Good Women of China’ was not only my alphabetical X, but as it turns out, also a gem that has been hidden on my shelves for quite a while.

Without a hint of hyperbole or pretension, this is the saddest book I have ever read. This book should be required reading by every adult human being everywhere so that humanity learns what it is to suffer at the hands of power; learns that such suffering exists and that it is inherently wrong - a deep scar on our legacy and something our collective conscience should feel deeply unsettled by. The book’s title could have substituted the word good for several other adjectives: The poor/overlooked/long suffering/oppressed Women of China for example.

Xinran was a Chinese reporter with a radio phone-in show for women, which exposed her to their tragic stories from across the country which she shares here. One after the other, each story breaks your heart a little more than the last as we hear the brutal experiences of their female narrators. The theme: the weight of a regime, culture and hierarchy crushing and breaking the gender that gives them life and love.

I can’t fathom how important Xinran’s show must have been to the oppressed women nor how important this book being published is to a future hope of a better world - for by no means is China the only country where such oppression exists. I urge you to read this book, it is admittedly tough to read but I consider this small recompense for the pain these women have suffered. Hopefully a lot of people read it and the veil of China’s past treatment of women is lifted, understood and never seen again. ( )

Even though this book was published in 2002, and some things may be outdated, this is an important book. I enjoyed the way in which Xinran (the author) completely immersed herself in the life of the womenshe interviews and sometimes tries to help. I would love to see a follow up book with how (some of) these women are doing now, and how the lives of women in China have changed in the meantime. ( )

Nacer mujer en China

Liberar el sufrimiento del yugo del silencio fue el reto que se planteó la periodista Xinran cuando en su programa de radio:

During the late eighties and early nineties, Xinran presented a late-night programme on Chinese radio in which she invited women to come forward and tell their own stories, with the idea of breaking down some of the barriers that make it difficult to talk about gender issues in China. The book is a small selection from the many stories she was able to gather during that time, obviously put together both with a journalist's eye for what makes a good story and with the didactic intention of covering a suitable range of "key topics" to give her readers some perspective on the main issues affecting women in Chinese society.

As should be obvious (but isn't necessarily, until someone like Xinran comes along and points it out), China is a vast, complicated and diverse country that has gone through huge changes in a very short time, and there's no way you can get a real idea of what life is like there from listening to the accounts of a handful of individuals. The dozen or so stories we look at in detail in this book help, but it's still only scratching the surface. Xinran's point is of course not so much to tell outsiders what China is like, but rather to show Chinese women that talking about what's happened in their lives is a first step towards making things better.

What struck me about the stories? Firstly, and maybe most obviously, there's an element of the "banality of evil". The bad things that happen to Chinese women are essentially the same bad things that happen to the weaker members of society everywhere, especially in times of war and unrest. Sadly, sexual violence, incest, wife-battering and economic hardship are not exclusive to any region or type of society. Then of course there are the specifically Chinese elements. Women seem to have suffered disproportionately in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, and Xinran illustrates this with many examples (including her own experience as a little girl sent to a special "black" school because she was the child of bourgeois parents). As we all know, China since the revolution has been a place where women work in "traditionally male" roles to an extent that's often surprising to outsiders, but there's still a "glass ceiling" in place (Xinran also tells the story of the educated young women who joined the revolution only to be assigned to the task of becoming replacement wives for party leaders who had been separated from their original families by the war). The state interferes in sexuality and private life to an extent that most of us would find difficult to believe, whilst cultural inhibitions make it difficult to talk openly about sexual matters. Xinran also makes it clear that we have to remember what a vast and diverse place China is: in a final chapter, she makes a short visit to a village in a semi-desert part of western China, where civilisation has had essentially no impact on day-to-day life, and women exist in conditions that make even the really bad things she describes elsewhere look positively benign. Yet those women, unlike any others she has interviewed, make a point of telling her that they are happy.

I'm glad I read this: it's a well-written, very carefully constructed book, and I think I learnt something from it, even if it is only scratching the surface. ( )

The stories should shake you to your very core...the female voices of China are given a well deserved opportunity to speak. ( )