Projecting the hidden voices of Chinese women

I was spoiled by the brilliance of Wild Swans by Jung Chang but any thoughts that Th e Good Women of China by Xinran would be similarly revealing about the lives of Chinese women today were sadly quashed. Xinran is a journalist who worked for eight years as a presenter at a Chinese radio station. Touched by many letters she received from women she persuaded her bosses to let her reveal some of their stories.

It was a bold move because some of those stories were critical of Chinese society and it’s ruling elite — exactly the kind of story subject to the country’s strictly enforced censorship rules. Th ough Deng Xiaoping had started a process of opening up the country in 1983, it was still risky to discuss personal issues in the media. But Xinran prevailed. She was, she said: … trying to open a little window, a tiny hole, so that people could allow their spirits to cry out and breath after the gunpowderladen atmosphere of the previous forty years.

Over time she began pushing the boundaries, taking a risk that one mistake – even one comment – could endanger her career if not her freedom. Such was the popularity of her program that the radio station had to install four answering machines so women could call in and record their comments. Words on the Night Breeze became famous through the country for its unfl inching portrayal of what it meant to be a woman in modern China. Xinran was hailed as the fi rst female presenter to ‘lift the veil’ of Chinese women and delve into the reality of their lives.

Her programme dealt with sexual abuse, attitudes towards disability, forcible removal of children from their mothers and a practice of pushing intelligent women into unhappy marriages with government leaders — marriages they could not leave because of the resulting damage to the husband’s reputation. Her stories concerned women of all diff erent classes and ages and degrees of experience.

Th e most moving for me was the story of Xiao Ying, a survivor of an earthquake in Tangshan in 1976 which killed 300,000 people. In the subsequent chaos she was gang raped by soldiers. When her mother found her in a ditch, she kept pulling down her trousers, closing her eyes and humming. Xiao Ying was sent for psychiatric treatment.

She seemed better after two and a half years, but the day before her parents were due to take her home, she hanged herself. She was 16. Xinran was deeply aff ected by what she discovered, travelling the breadth of the country to track down some of the women whose stories she had heard. One of them lived in a poor shack next to the radio station, keeping body and soul alive by scavenging though Xinran discovered her son was a wealthy party offi cial. Another woman she found in a remote hotel in shock after meeting again the boyfriend from whom she’d been separated 45 years earlier.

Xinran sat with her throughout the night, slowly giving the woman the courage to speak about her life. Centuries of obedience to the principles of “Th ree Submissions and the Four Virtues” (submission to fathers, husbands and sons), followed by years of political turmoil had made women terrifi ed of talking openly about their feelings.

Xinran won their trust and, through her compassion and ability to listen. Repeatedly they told her that she gave them a space in which to express themselves without fearing blame or other negative reactions. If the ability to tell their stories, changed these women, hearing them also changed Xinran. Her youthful enthusiasm gave way to pain the more she learned and the more she understood. At times a kind of numbness would come over me from all the suff ering I had encountered, as if a callus were forming within me. Th en I would hear another story and my feelings would be stirred up all over again. By 1997, after a particularly traumatic visit to a community where women were denied sanitary product, whose wombs had collapsed through constant childcare, the pain became too much and Xinran left China for England. She wanted, she said to breathe new air and to feel what it was like to live in a free society. But she didn’t want to abandon the women who’d been encouraged by her programme – so she wrote her book to teach the west what it meant to be a woman in China. It’s a worthy cause and there is little doubt that Xinran gave hope to thousands of women whose stories she heard and the millions more who listened to her programme. But it doesn’t make for a very good book. By the very nature of its subject Th e Good Women of China is an episodic book and each of the 15 personalstories she relates is touching. But it lacks objectivity and analysis. Instead of stepping back from a story and refl ecting what this tells us about Chinese society, she’s onto the next example and the next and the next. Without analysis and refl ection on whether these conditions have changed, it’s hard to comprehend if these are isolated examples or how representative they are of real life. Reading this book left me with too many unanswered questions. Footnotes About the book: Th e Good Women of China: Hidden Voices is translated by Esther Tyldesley.

It was published in 2002 by Chatto and Windus in the UK. About the author: Xinran (the name means “with pleasure” ) was born in Beijing in 1958 and lived with her wealthy family until the Cultural Revolution separated them when she was seven. After working in a military university she became a radio journalist. Her talk show, Words on the Night Breeze, started in 1988; within three weeks she was receiving 100 letters a day, mostly from women. She moved to the UK in 1997, where she compiled their stories in Th e Good Women of China. Xinran is a columnist for national newspapers in the UK. Why I read this book: I’ve been fortunate enough through my job to visit China and to meet many people from that country.

Th e stories of their culture and how this is under pressure as the country becomes an economic power house and a force in international aff airs, has fascinated me. I thought Th e Good Women of China would help me better understand the people of this country. Th is book is part of my 20booksofsummer reading list. Source: www.bookertalk.com

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