A book that recounts eight years of research the journalist Xinran on the theme of women in a China that begins to open but where attitudes remain closed. Xinran explains first how it came to be interested in the fate of women in her country. Then follow different stories that marked the journalist from the evidence received in his mail on the answering radio or she has collected during his research. The stories of her Chinese women that have crossed in this book are all more poignant, heartrending and terrible than each other. We also learn the story of her mother and her childhood. I often had the tears came to my eyes, yet I am not so emotional that it generally. I am often surprised to say, "but how is it possible for such things How can they still exist in our time How can we still treat women as mere objects or a commodity???" ... (Keep in mind that the book ends in 1997, there has barely ten years). Xinran itself emotionally exhausted by all his discoveries, finally gave China to England, where she published this book to try to explain to Western women what it is to be a woman in China, but also for unload his heart - one of his friends, old Chen advises, "If you do not write these stories, their overflow will break your heart."
"When China began to open up, it was as if a hungry child devoured everything that came to hand without distinction. Later, as the world discovered a China rose happiness in his new attire, who howled over hunger, cvommunauté journalists attended, mute, convulsions of the body ravaged by the pain of indigestion. But it was a body whose sterile brain because the brain of China had not yet developed the cells needed to absorb the truth and freedom. The divorce between what they knew and what they were allowed to say put a strain on the mental and physical health of journalists. " (P.330)
A wonderful book that every woman should read to understand how lucky we are to live in our time in "privileged" countries and that it is not anywhere as easy to be a woman ...
