helencbradshaw's Full Review: Xinran Xue and Esther Tyldesley - The Good Women o...
The Good Women of China is author Xinran Xue’s first book and it is an eye opening look at the role of women in a relatively recent China. The author herself now lives in London and has done for the last 7 years; having spent the eight years previous to this broadcasting a radio show in China – “Words on the Night Breeze”.
The book itself is biographical, and at times autobiographical and is an account of some of the women that touched her with their life stories over the years in presenting the show. It also provides a fascinating if at times somewhat shocking account of the unfair treatment that women in China have to live with in the latter years of the 20th Century.
There are in fact fourteen separate stories of Chinese Women in the book, and this makes for a very readable journey through their lives as each chapter represents a different woman’s story.
Journalism was controlled by the Party and although the process of ‘opening up’ had started in 1983, it was difficult to undo what the Chinese people had known as normality for the previous forty or so years. Xinran had a loyal female audience who would write to her and ask her quesitons in private, and some of these questions are quite alarming in their naivety and their acceptance of the woman as the less important sex, as well as total confusion about their natural feelings for other persons.
Xinran receives a letter from a young villager who writes about the plight of a young wife who is being held against her wishes by her “husband” who fears she might run off. Xinran saves her life despite little interest from the police who do not want to be seen going against a villager. The girl was in fact 12 years old and had been kidnapped, and her husband was 60. This inspires her to try and reach out to more women in China and her show becomes a kind of confidential service, despite it being shown late at night when most peasant Chinese would have retired.
It is impossible not to be moved by some of the attrocities that these fourteen women in the book have suffered, and the sacrifices they have made, for their husbands or families, up to and including their own lives and health. All of the chapters are headed in a straightforward and descriptive manner beginning with the totally heart-breaking account of “The Girl who Kept a Fly as a Pet”, outlined briefly below.
“The Girl who Kept a Fly as a Pet” is the account of a young girl who was sexually abused by her father from the moment she ‘became a woman’ at a mere 11 years old. The story is in fact mainly the little girl’s diary of the last six years of her life, and of a mother that would rather turn a blind eye to her husband’s behaviour than the implications of doing the right thing for her daughter. The child whose niavety seems totally unreal compared to Western society ends spending long periods of time in hospital due to the emotional difficulties and this in fact is a safe haven from her Father. What moved me in this story was the straightforward childlike account of her last days, and how she desperately did not want to be discharged from hospital and returned to her family – written more like a kid of seven than a young girl of seventeen.
For the reader, Xinran provides a fascinating journey across China from a female perspective, and she encounters rape, suicide, lost love, arranged marriages, Scavenger Women, female homosexuality and plenty of brutality including being faced with her own haunting memories. But when you read the account of what Chinese Men believe is a perfect woman, it is no wonder that so few can comply (Don’t go out and open up to other Men, bear a son, never make a mess of the housework, be good at sex and be good looking for outside, and be soft and warm and never lose her temper!!)
Xinran does cover her own upbringing in a couple of chapters, as a result of meeting another of the women featured and this itself is not without trauma, given that her family were ostracised by the Red Guard because her father worked for a British firm for over 35 years, therefore they were viewed as capitalists and her parents were imprisoned - leaving Xinran and her much younger brother at a virtual prison themselves and like all “polluted” children - made to suffer appalling abuse.
The book itself does give a somewhat light insight into some of the problems of China’s recent past, while not in itself giving a full history lesson. But many of the subjects of Xinran’s books had committed ‘crimes’ such as having had further education or having worked for the pre 49 government or even having overseas connections were enough to fall foul of the Red Guard.
When you read accounts such as this it makes you realise how totally sheltered our lives are compared with so many of the world’s population who for all practical purposes do not share the most basic of rights. Reading this book is a humbling experience.
In 1999, in London, Xinran was the victim of a mugging in London and the most precious thing she had on her was the one and only manuscript of this book. It would have been a terrible tragedy if she had not been able to share these Women’s accounts with us. While the policeman asked her if her life was really more valuable than a book, Xinran was fighting for the rights of the Women that touched her in hanging on to her bag. And her stories definitely touched me too. A recommended and very moving read for women everywhere, and for men too.
Published by Random House cover price £6.99 ISBN 0-099 44078-4 a very short 230 pages.
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