Party and state and loveless marriages

Xinran, with the manuscript of The Good Women of China in a bag is physically assaulted while on her way home from teaching an evening class at London's School of Oriental and African Studies. When the policeman arrives at the scene he asks her why she has risked her life fighting over a bag. Xinran, trembling and in a state of shock, says, 'It had my book in it.' The policeman then asks, 'Is a book more important than your life?' And Xinran thinks that in many ways life is more important than a book. 'But in so many ways my book was my life.'
Xinran, born in 1958, collected the material for her book over eight long years, and then she could bear it no more and wanted to breathe 'new air …in a free society.' She left China in 1997 and while working at SOAS she began writing her book on women. Someone told her, '…if you don't write these stories your heart will be filled up and broken by them.' The book is for every Chinese woman and her son Pan Pan.
Beginning in 1989 Xinran hosted Words on the Night Breeze, a radio program. She invited women to talk about themselves. These were true stories of politics, Communism, and personal tales, of patriarchal suppression suffered by Chinese women. They were terrified to talk openly about their own feelings. Xinran won the trust of the women. They talked on taboo topics and buried emotions. Xinran listened to them patiently and discovered true stories about ordinary women. She was discouraged by her senior male colleagues about running the radio program. Their opinion was that she could never change the laws affecting women, and women would never speak their minds.
The book is a portrayal of what it means to be an average woman in modern China. Xinran's work is exceptional, an approach to history from below, focused more on what happens among the masses at the base level of society, close to subaltern studies, while Jung Chang's Wild Swans and Aiping Mu's Vermillion Gate are stories of women writers from the upper echelons of Chinese society writing about themselves and their families.
It was in 1983 that Deng Xiaoping's effort to open up China took roots. Xinran as an employee of the state radio system and other journalists had to attend political study classes covering Deng Xiaoping's views on reforms and Jiang Zemin's political economy theory. Condemnation of colleague was regular during these sessions; petty matters made large, such as not announcing leaders' names in the right hierarchical order, non-disclosure of a love affair to the Party and other similar shortfalls. Radio programs were controlled and constraints were imposed by government censors.
There were hours of tapes on her answering machines--- angry, muted or posing a question, or relating experiences, all by anonymous women who bore the marks of civil strife in a restrictive society. Among the piles of letters she received each day was one from a village boy wishing to remain anonymous for fear of being killed. He told her that an old man of sixty had kidnapped a young girl of twelve to be his wife. Xinran tactfully drew the attention of the village headman who rescued the young girl. The power of the peasant gave her an understanding of how Mao had defeated Chiange Kai-shek, the British and the Americans.
Just as Xinran was winding up a day's program, a woman called and asked her opinion on homosexuality, and why people discriminated against them and why homosexuality was illegal in China. Homosexuality originated from the imperial court of China. It was common during the rule of the Tang and Song dynasties. It helped soldiers cope with war. As the need for procreation was strong homosexuality never dominated society, though a Chinese Homosexual Association was in place that called conferences.
To the woman caller Xinran explained that one had the right to choose one's lifestyle and the right to one's sexual needs. Heredity, environment, or curiosity was not the sole reason for homosexuality. People with different experiences in their lives make similar or different choices. Recognizing differences does not mean expecting others to agree on the subject of homosexuality--- this expectation leads to prejudices. 'To our homosexual friends who have experienced prejudice I would like to say 'sorry' on behalf of the careless people.We all need understanding in this world.'
Among the letters that Xinran received, there was one letter from sexually abused Yan Yolang that established the prevalence of the cruel practice of incest, and the 1975 diary of orphan Hong Xue raised questions on love being equated with immorality and public decency. Suicide was illegal, irrespective of any social significance.
In 1995 a survey in China found, among other four categories of workers, that journalists had a short life expectancy. They witnessed shocking and upsetting events. Reporting the true face of what they saw was very difficult as Party principles governed all news. Often they were forced to write and say things they disagreed with.
Xinran interviewed many women living through loveless political marriages, cruel deprivation of food after childbirth or dumbfounded due to physical torture. She wept, unable to help them because of broadcasting regulations.
Xinran thought China's opening up was like 'a starving child… devouring …everything indiscriminately.' The world saw a happy, well-fed China. But the journalistic community saw a body suffering the pain of indigestion with an insufficient brain 'to absorb truth and freedom.' Journalists were not allowed to speak their minds. This unbearable conflict made Xinran give up her journalistic career.
In 1996, a year before she left China, Xinran, in the guise of an anthropologist, travelled to the backward and poverty stricken north-western part, actually west of Xi'an in central China, 'a corner forgotten by the Revolution'. Xinran was stunned to see the extremely low level of primitiveness surrounding the women in the tiny village of Shouting Hill on the border of the desert and the loess plateau --- not shown on any map! They were women of her generation and time living in cave houses and water was the most precious and rare item. Women were the common items of trade and reproduction.
In conclusion Xinran says '….out of the hundreds of Chinese women…spoken to over nearly ten years of broadcasting and journalism the women of Shouting Hill were the only ones to tell me they were happy.' This, to me, in the 229-page book, with 15 episodes, prologue and epilogue, stands out as a unique metaphor.

Farida Shaikh is a critic and member of The Reading Circle.