Book 60: "The Good Woman of China" by Xinran

[kittiwake]

I'm very glad that I wasn't born a Chinese woman during the 20th century, since the women Xinran interviewed for her radio show seemed to have uniformly harrowing lives. My favourite chapter was about the children's home run by women who lost had their own children in the 1976 earthquake, with the story of the girl who died fourteen days after the earthquake being particularly traumatic. When I read the last chapter of the book, I was stunned that the villagers of Shouting Hill lived in such primitive conditions as late as 1996, but according to Xinran, they were the only women she spoke to who were actually happy.