Rating: 
Summary: Query about style
Review: I thought this a good and involving book, but I had a problem believing it - not because the stories themselves are incredible, but because the manner of telling them involves an excessive number of remarkable coincidences.This may be a tradition in Chinese literature that I am unaware of - a kind of 'tidying up' of events to enhance the balance of a true story - but the final effect was to make me a little doubtful. In particular, the coincidences relating to the author's father's former classmate stretched credulity, especially given the population and geographic scale of China. However, that said, the picture of women's lives is tragic and moving, and may increase understanding of 20th century China for a lot of Western readers.
Rating: 
Summary: A must read
Review: If you are not firmly knowlegeable about China's recent past, I recommend this book to be read after Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang. The two combined give an outstanding view of the social/political environment of 20th century China and what women of all classes there have faced in life. For scholars, it would be interesting to put this in a more global context, I suspect there can be interesting differences and similarities across several factors.
Rating:
Summary: Good book but just one point to make...
Review: Once I picked up the book and began reading, I couldn't put it down. The stories of these women who are so different, and yet so much like us, made me weep, laugh, and be astonished at their lives and history. Xinran Xue is a gifted writer who captures the poignancy of these womens' lives, whom she came to know through her radio program in China. In a time when most reporters would have left well-enough alone, she goes out into her world to interview women from all walks of life, and expresses their stories of incest, brutality, achievement, and daily survival with a simplicity that is dynamic and powerful. This book is a MUST-HAVE for anyone's library.
Rating:
Summary: What a wonderful, heartbreaking, fascinating book!
Review: Once I picked up the book and began reading, I couldn't put it down. The stories of these women who are so different, and yet so much like us, made me weep, laugh, and be astonished at their lives and history. Xinran Xue is a gifted writer who captures the poignancy of these womens' lives, whom she came to know through her radio program in China. In a time when most reporters would have left well-enough alone, she goes out into her world to interview women from all walks of life, and expresses their stories of incest, brutality, achievement, and daily survival with a simplicity that is dynamic and powerful. This book is a MUST-HAVE for anyone's library.
Rating:
Summary: A must read for all feminists
Review: Once I started reading, I could not stop until I finished it. The true stories of the lives, experiences, pain and suffering of the women described by the author are unforgettable. I am a second generation Chinese American, raised in Chinatown in Los Angeles. I was raised watching movies from China and Hong Kong where the stories were always about the suffering of unnoticed, unappreciated women. I have always been grateful that I was not born in China. Members of my family had to live through the nightmare of the "Cultural Revolution" and my aunt who was persecuted and sent to the countryside for "reeducation" because she was the daughter of a merchant, died as a result of starvation and neglect.
The only criticism I have of the book is the relentlessness of the sadness and misery of these women's lives. It makes the reading hard work. I hope the author is encouraged to share more true stories that are not always so tragic and depressing.
Rating:
Summary: HAUNTING STORIES THAT NEED TO BE TOLD
Review: The Good Women of China is a riveting, powerful read. The mix of stories is an excellent selection to give us a glimpse of the wide range of problems the women of China face and the indignities they continue to endure. One reviewer said Xinran wasn't truthful in her reports and over dramatised events. I disagree. I have read enough of the plight of women in China to feel these stories, in their simplicity, are probably the most "truthful" accounts I have read. Considering her own personal story, it would have taken a lot for Xinran to put pen to paper to share these with us, but I am grateful that she did. The chapters that haunt me the most are those about The Guomindang General's Daughter and The Woman Whose Father Did Not Know Her. I defy readers not to be moved .
Rating:
Summary: Good book but just one point to make...
Review: The Good Women of China is wonderful collection of vignettes that each give the reader a glimpse of what it is like to must have been like to be a woman in modernizing China. Xinran met each of these women through her radio show. Each of their stories paints a painful picture of the hardships that they continue to face throughout their day-to-day living.
However, in the chapter "What Chinese Women Believe", I was sad to see "Falun Gong" so inaccurately portrayed, as I knew that her words would affect readers, who may not ever read another source. I am a Swedish reader and I have practiced Falun Gong for two years now. Falun Gong is a popular qigong practice that people do in over 60 countries worldwide. It is based on the values of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance. As I understand it, the aim of the practice, as explained by the founder, Li Hongzhi, is to do your best to embody these three principles everyday and in everything you do. The practice has truly changed my heart and I feel that I have become a much kinder and considerate person as a result. My health has also vastly improved as a result of practicing it.
Unfortunately, practitioners in China are currently suffering terrible persecution, as I write this, because the number of practitioners rose to between 70 and 100 million by 1998 (almost a thirteenth of China's current population). Jiang Zemin, former Chinese leader, after failing to win popularity similar to those of his predecessors, Mao Ze Dong and Deng Xiao Ping, initiated the persecution out of jealousy at Falun Gong's popularity, vowing to "Defame their reputations, bankrupt them financially and destroy them physically."
The US government has already passed two resolutions condemning the persecution (H.Con. Res. 118 & 503). Jiang is now facing lawsuits in 13 different countries for "genocide and crimes against humanity," as are several of his main "accomplices", including Luo Gan, head of China's gestapo-like "6-10 Office."
The inaccuracies in the woman's account are likely due to the lack of accurate information regarding the practice in China in general. Since the persecution began in July 1999, the state-run media has been utilized to vilify Falun Gong on a daily basis. Falun Gong books are burned and web sites and blocked, making it very difficult to obtain accurate information. This might explain why the author seemed to know more about the practice than the woman giving the account.
. I hope I have included enough information to give at least a sense of both the nature of this wonderful practice and the scope of this human rights disaster. However, just in case, more information can be found if you are interested at - www.faluninfo.net.
Otherwise, I found Xin Ran's book to be a good read. Well done!
Take care and good luck book shopping. There is many a fine one her at Amazon.com J.
Best,
Jacob :D
Rating:
Summary: powerful stories of inhumanity and strength
Review: These gut-wrenching stories of women's lives in China were gathered by Xinran during the 1990s when she hosted a nightly radio show featuring calls and letters from women who had never before had an outlet. Not all of the stories come directly from the show ' two of the most powerful involve research that Xinran did herself. A visit to an orphanage run by mothers who had lost children during the 1976 Tangshan earthquake relates the unbearably painful memories of women whose tragedies arose not only out of natural disaster but also man's inhumanity to women. And the final story, the one that was one too many for her radio career, takes her to a remote desert village of almost unimaginable poverty where the women's only relief from isolation and hardship is the bowl of egg and water given them on the birth of a son. The story of Xinran's own traumatic childhood during the Cultural Revolution (she was born in 1958) comes out during an interview with a woman imprisoned for loose morals, whose childhood was one of serial rape and blackmail. Another woman, brought up as a boy, and gang-raped when the masquerade was discovered in puberty, causes a ruckus at the station when she begins discussing a forbidden subject ' lesbianism ' on the air. This woman attaches herself to Xinran, becoming obsessed, a stalker. But there is no real menace in her, only a pitiful loneliness, and Xinran is able to defuse her with sympathy and firmness. Sexual repression and ignorance was for so long an official tenet of Chinese society that even Xinran, an educated city girl, says she refused to hold hands with a boy at age 22 for fear of getting pregnant. Many of the letters she receives ask naïve sexual questions or confide long-secret (shameful) rapes. Sexual abuse is at the root of many of her stories. Relating the genesis of her program, the author quotes a letter from a peasant boy describing the plight of a 12-year-old girl, kidnapped and sold into marriage. To prevent her from fleeing, her elderly husband keeps her in chains. The boy asks Xinran's help, but when she calls the police they shrug and tell her it's a common occurrence. The policeman quotes a Chinese proverb to her: ' 'In the countryside the heavens are high and the emperor is far away.' ' The villagers, he says, are not afraid of the police and would 'torch our cars and beat up our officers.' But, faced with her determination, he relents and gets the local agricultural authorities to threaten witholding of fertilizer. In Xinran's presence, the girl is freed and returned to her frantic parents on the other side of the country. But Xinran is not praised for her efforts, only criticized for ' 'moving the troops about and stirring up the people.' ' Shaken, she begins to wonder, 'Just what was a woman's life worth in China?' Not much, the reader will come to answer, as Xinran does. This first story is one of the few with a happy ending. Many of these stories are rooted in the past ' in the Revolution itself or the Cultural Revolution of her own childhood ' and come to Xinran from outside. But others involve the circumstances of today's Chinese women, observed by the author in her daily life ' homeless women, discarded women, bitter, successful women, impoverished, ignorant women, mothers, sisters, wives, daughters. Her struggles to make the program more open ' to take calls on the air, for instance ' illustrate the combination of fear and excitement that accompanies increments of loosening in China. Xinran's heartfelt writing, peppered with Chinese proverbs and imbued with ancient Chinese culture, brings these stories to life in all their terrible strength. A sad, powerful, inspiring book.
Rating:
Summary: Must Read!
Review: These true accounts of life in communist China for women will sadden, amaze, and make you realise freedom is not just a vague ideal but something we take for granted daily.
This novel is an emotive collection of stories from Xinran, a radio broadcaster in China. For years in China she had a program which encouraged women to talk about their lives. The political minefield she uncovered is recounted through her own story, which is interwoven through the heartbreaking tales of her listeners. Tales of rape, forced marriages, separation from parents and other forms of cruelty are vividly recounted in a voice that is appealing for its honesty and simplicity. Personally, I felt that such a book is important to read because freedom is something you take for granted until you see the consequences of its loss.
Rating:
Summary: A good book
Review: This book is a real eye-opener to the treatment many Chinese women recieve from their husbands (and fathers). Xinran does a good job of telling the stories without letter her emotions surface and take over. I'd like to note: somebody else made it sound like these women are treated this way because China is communist, or because Chinese people aren't "free" (I would go into detail on what freedom really is, but that would take up too much space). It isn't the government but rather the men and the culture that are responsible for these women's hardships. In the US (and most other Western countries as well), rape does occur, sometimes often, as do spousal abuse, etc etc, but generally this isn't because the people of these countries aren't free. One may also note that none of these countries are communist, yet many of their women suffer.
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