The Good Women of China

The Good Women of China Hidden Voices by Xinran is a collection of stories and personal insight into the lives of women in China.

Xinran is the woman author of this book. Her name means 'with pleasure' from the poem by Zhu Ziqing about spring: "With pleasure, Nature opened its eyes to new things." Xinran's book is opening a new world to us as she shows us the lives of these women, sometimes it is heart wrenching and painful to read but the experience of reading this book will change your life.

Born in Beijing in 1958, Xinran went through the turmoil of the Revolution in China to the Communist times today. Much of what happened affected her life deeply and she writes about her own life in this book and how it shaped her as a woman.

These other lives of women that Xinran writes about started when she was hosting a radio call-in show, where women from all over would call just to be able to talk to someone and be heard.

China has been through cultural, social and political turmoil which has left the country and its people scarred and insecure. Add to this the inequality of women who have no choice but to accept their cruel fate and you end up with a country stuck in the worst circumstances of poverty, injustice and abuse-the worst victims here are women.

Even before Communism and the multiple revolutions that took place happened, women in China suffered a stigma of class defined roles, family pecking orders along with abuse and neglect from their husbands.

It's hard to say even now just how far women have come but their place in society now is far from equal.

The Good Women of China was written during 1997, spanning a work collected during the 1980's when China was beginning to 'open up' to the world. Xinran spent months, years even, to interview and collect stories from these women whose lives are unbelievable to read but shows the true courage and character of the Chinese woman who is willing to suffer so much for so little.

There are many different layers to Chinese culture, each with its own set of rules and regulations which goes double for the women who live within them. In some cases to go against these rules is to 'lose face' and suffer the worst crime of punishment and abuse from society who has no pity for these outcasts who have done nothing more than defend themselves. These cases are more common than most people realize and it was one of these cases which lead the author, Xinran, to examine the lives of these women and to get a closer glimpse at who they are.

After receiving a letter for help at her radio station, Xinran followed the case to a girl trapped in an impoverished village to a cruel husband. It turned out she was kidnapped and her family had went into debt trying to find her. But when Xinran had intervened she was scorned for the trouble she had caused the police, villagers and the fragile social state in-between. She was even warned not to tell about how she received the letter and from whom in case that person was to be killed by the villagers. This event shocked her but later she learned, it was quite common among women in poor villages to suffer this fate.

More and more letters came in as one particular disturbing story was recalled by her in the book about The Girl Who Kept a Fly as a Pet. It was the story about a girl, sexually abused by her father and driven to the point of suicide as she made herself deathly sick in order to get away from the cruelty at home. While in the hospital she made friends with a fly and kept it as a pet until it died. As the girl was determined not to go home to her horrible father she made herself sicker until she died. Her story was brought to Xinran by an anonymous messenger and is possibly the most disturbing of all the stories in the book.

There are about fifteen stories in all, each unique and heart wrenching but each one very important to these women and to the author.

In the prologue the author wrote about how she was attacked by a six foot tall man who was trying to rob her and take her bag. Her manuscript of the book was in the bag and she wouldn't let go but fought back at the attacker. Eventually people came and the assailant ran away. Later she was asked by the police if she was crazy enough to risk her life for a book.

But to the author this was much more than a book because she was carrying the lives of these women and the journey had been long and hard, too hard to repeat ever again and it was as the author wrote:

"In fighting for that bag, I was defending my feelings, and the feelings of Chinese women. The book was the result of so many things which, once lost, could never be found again.

When you walk into your memories, you are opening a door to the past; the road within has many branches, and the route is different every time." -Xinran 2002

She later finished the book while in England and it has been translated from the Chinese by Esther Tyldesley, who keeps the true feeling of the book all the way through to the end and expresses the author's writing eloquently.

These stories touched me deeply as I only had a glimpse of the harsh life women in China faced after watching a documentary on PBS called, China On the Inside.

This book showed me the horrors some women have had to face, some since childhood, as they struggled to fit in a world where women are valued only for the sons they can produce. This mentality can be deadly as some of the women are sexually abused, raped and driven insane by the ignorance and cruelty of men who do not and will not understand women.

I checked out this book from the Trinity United Methodist Church library, as an Education for Missions tool. Inside there was a note, "Good book, but you need a strong stomach for this reading! Many atrocities against women in the 60's - 80's."

I agree with this and would not recommend this book lightly. However for those who have the courage to share these women's lives and stories by reading this book, it is a book that can change your life and the way we see women everywhere.