Women of China: Hidden Voices

Recently my daughter came back on a brief visit from Australia and went through all her books in the loft.  As she did an English degree there were a lot.

 

Before I took them to the Oxfam book shop I had a quick look through for any I might read.  I donate small numbers of books I don’t want to keep to the Bury Park Sainsburys table top book sale for charity.  It’s really popular.  I like the idea of picking up a book for a donation when you finish your food shopping.

 

I have just finished one of her books, ‘The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices’ by Xinran.  I was so moved by this.  It’s based on Xinran’s radio programme, ‘Words on the Night Breeze’ which shared women’s stories of what it meant to be a woman in modern China – after centuries of obedience to men and years of political turmoil.  Women in Europe don’t appreciate how fortunate we are with our freedoms.

 

Many are extreme stories of how physical and emotional abuse led to broken lives, or unrequited love in some way.  The last story is about the women of Shouting Hill who live in cave houses in an area west of Xi’an in central China.  This was 1996.  As the writer points out, as these women live together in the same conditions, isolated from external influence, they do not know what they are missing.  The villagers struggle to find enough water for their basic needs.  The greatest honour in a woman’s life there was to have a bowl of egg mixed with water when she had a son.  It’s called Shouting Hill because the farmers have to shout above the winds that range on the plateau.  Women there are valued solely for their utility and are bartered and shared between several husbands.  Due to a lack of clothing, girl children will put on a set of clothes in rotation to go outside and help their mother.  Older women all walk bow legged because most suffer from severe prolapses and from wearing a special kind of leaf, that is recycled after use as it has to be brought from so far away, as a sanitary towel.

 

It is salutary that out of the hundreds of women she spoke to, these were the only Chinese women who told her they were happy. 

Xinran had to come to England to write the book.