Xinran et al 16 3 5 (15) 25 1 19

I have not read many books about China but of one thing I am quite clear: no matter how long I live I shall never read another of such unimaginable horrors as the stories collected together in the book of today's title written by Xue Xinran first published in 2002 I have only a short while ago finished reading...

The first major work of Chinese fiction I read was by Jung Chang in her biographical novel about 3 generations of women beginning with her grandmother who was sold to a War Lord at the age of 15 to be his concubine, then her mother's story and finally that of herself growing up, age 16 in 1968, at the time of the Cultural Revolution in her widely acclaimed book "Wild Swans" which describes much of the China of the 20th century. 

The second major work was the biography of Mao Zedong entitled The Private Life of Chairman Mao written by his personal physician Li Zhisui for 22 years from 1954 to his death in 1976 and published in 1996.

Each work made a big impression upon me but none greater that the harrowing story of the women Xinran talks about during the years from 1989 to 1997 when she presented a radio programme on Chinese State Radio entitled "Words on the Night Breeze." 

Now for someone growing up in England at the outbreak of WW ll who for much of his childhood was surrounded by 3 generations of women: my maternal grandmother my mother and my kid sister who arrived almost 4 years after me, plus an older brother who was the kind of boy many men would have liked to have had for a son of their own I felt a bit neglected by the men in our circle and as a consequence was more drawn to the women of my young world as I have noted before in these blogs...and my childhood as a further consequence was one in which I felt no shortage of feminine affection and love.

Then over New Year in 2000/01 my wife and I spent our first holiday in China, visiting Beijing for 10 days from around December 29^th, and then again in January 2008 for a week’s holiday visiting Hong Kong and Guangzhou.

Of course between 2000 and 2008 we saw big changes in terms of the changing fashion people wore emerging still from the all-pervading communist era in 2000 to a form of dress almost indistinguishable for particularly the young people to anywhere else in the world. One of the things that struck both my wife and I on our second visit was how the older generation let’s say from middle age onwards men and women would visit the parks together to go dancing, and how rather than be offended if anyone took pictures the people themselves if anything encouraged total strangers to do so, as if they were proud to show their dancing skills off..?

I don’t intend to review these books: other far more gifted writers do this and there are even the authors themselves at least the two lady authors holding forth about their experiences on YouTube for example: save to say a very few words more…

Chairman Mao explained for me why China retained Stalinist dogma following Stalin’s death March 5^th 1953, just 63 years ago today, when he abused Stalin’s successor Nikita Khrushchev during his state visit shortly thereafter, with telling confidences to Dr Li his physician as they returned by car to his summer villa when I concluded it was nothing to do with dogma and had everything to do with not denigrating dead leaders, thinking only of his own legacy, a legacy which everyone knows shows no sign of being tarnished by the Chinese Leadership so long after Mao’s  own death…

Finally I just wish to say how I so admired these ladies for telling us such heart rendering stories about the China of the 20^th century and of how subservient to men women had always been to men in that culture, but how in the 21^st century we have so much cause for celebration because a woman’s life in China today is unimaginably better than the darkest days of Mao Zedong’s China, particularly during the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. My view is particularly coloured by all the young Chinese people I have met in recent years who attest to my favourable opinion of the modern China now emerging...                                  

P.S. After writing this blog I visited our swimming hut with my wife A-E who reminded me that the woman's position in modern China has a lot to do with the scarcity of women which attended the policy under Communism of permitting only one child per family and of how many girl children were subject to infanticide. It would appear therefore that the modern young Chinese males are now paying heavily for this policy with so few female partners for the majority of males in the population..?