Hello, this is my first English blog. Honestly, I don’t understand this modern idea at all; write something on an unknown network? If anybody can read it, how do people know me and find out about me here? After driving on to this ‘information highway’, will I ever be able to get off? I have seen some people driven mad, spending a huge amount of time and energy writing and responding to their emails…
Am I brave enough to jump on to this open, or say, ‘naked’ platform made by this ‘human factory’?
Let’s try and let people make of it what they will, or as the Chinese say ‘Let’s be a fish that people can cut and cook to their own taste’. (I have talked about Chinese fish philosophy in my book ‘What the Chinese Don’t Eat’)
Anyhow, I am on a book tour to publicise my new book ‘China Witness’, the tour begins in Beijing in my homeland, China. I arrived here on 26th August, the day after the Olympics finished. After China I travel to New Zealand, Australia, and Hong Kong.
China Witness is based on 20 years research, and spans China from west to east between the Yellow River and the Yangtze. It is the personal testimony of a generation whose stories have not yet been told. Here the grandparents and great-grandparents of today sum up in their own words - for the first and perhaps the last time - the vast changes that have overtaken China’s people over a century. I believe that this book will help our future understand our past.
On arriving in this new ‘historical internationalized Beijing’ I have been feeling so relaxed and happy, just like a student who has passed an important exam.
Since April I have been holding my breath watching the Olympic torch travel around the world. Then on 24th August we Chinese showed the world that our passion for Chinese culture and history had made the Beijing Olympics!
Everything here is still about the Olympics, there are Olympic flags and signs everywhere. It seems that no-one wants to stop talking about the first global event in China – positive and negative comments can be heard everywhere.
Many Chinese I met in Beijing told me they were in tears when they saw the Chinese scroll opened at the opening ceremony. They thought, or at least they hoped, that China would be reborn in the world and recognised as a nation of culture. They hoped that the people wouldn’t live under political control anymore, and that the experience of the Beijing Olympics would help us to free ourselves from the civil war, revolution and endless political movements of the last 100 years!
Yes we Chinese have lost and suffered so much in the last 100 years, as I hope you will see and understand when you read my book ‘China Witness’.
Xie xie nin! (Thank you!)
See you next time
Hello Xinran, I met you in Camden, NSW, Australia a few weeks ago and I am reading ‘China Witness’ at the moment. It is a wonderful book which is giving me a greater understanding of the older people from China. In the past I read about issues in newspapers and heard about them on the TV but it didn’t have the impact that your book has had on me. I think to understand was placed in the ‘too hard basket’ and it was soul destroying to hear the terrible things which happened to the people. I ‘travelled’ the Silk Road with my Tai Chi Group in October 2006 and got an overview of life there. I find it fascinating to read about the places you mention and to have had a glimpse of some of them. I have been referring back to your map in the book and now must get a larger map to check places in more detail. I love your U Tube clip of your interviews - I joined U Tube when I saw it. I look forward to reading your other books,
When we were in Kashgar we were visiting an ancient temple when an old Muslim man came quite close to me with my camera. I ‘asked’ if I could take his photo and he was quite pleased about that and was so happy to see his face on the digital screen. He stayed close by for quite a while and I often wondered what stories he could have shared.
While passing a school in a narrow lane some primary children were leaving for the day. They all smiled and said ‘hello’ , they were so happy to have their photo taken. They wanted us to take more so they could see themselves in our cameras, knowing we were taking their pictures home I guess. I was surprised that they could all speak English - perhaps simplified but we could communicate a little between the giggles.
I hope in time that some of the old people can understand that westerners are not all bad people and just focus on money and material things but I can understand why they do think that.
Keep on enlightening us all,
Suzanne Kijurina
Hello Xinran,
I am from Brazil. I read your first book that came my hands: The good women…i like it..
Two years ago, i bought “sky burial”…but in that situation, i don´t read that book…but, in this year, i decided to read..
Uau…..Wow…that women was a big woman in cold mountains, she lives to long years…waiting a man…waiting a love…
I am a jornalist too.
Congratulations.
You change many lifes around the world with your words.
See you on Brazil!!!
Dear Xinran,
I am so deeply impressed by ‘Sky Burial’.
Have you ever had any more news on the heroine of the book?
It haunts me till today.
Bye now,
hello xinran
i read your book the good women of china by coincidence when i find it in a second-hand store.i was really impressed by it,i didn’t know that stuff.I live in Romania and i’m 17 years old.I took the book with me at school and du ring all of the classes i read without a break.
This is so weird that now i am one of those women who writes to you like in the book,i just wanted to say that i will keep the book with me wherever i go to give me strength if i live hard times.Thank you very much for that wonderful book
February 24, 2009
Dear Xinran,
I have just come home from your lecture at Principia College, and really appreciated it. I met you just before lunch in the College dining room with Tim Booth. My travel experience in 1986 gave me only a suggestion of the China you described. As I told you, I was with a tour group—only ten in the group–in 1986, sponsored by a Professor at La Verne College in California. He still had business connections in China, and his wife was a travel agent, so it was very special. We actually stayed in the State House as guests in Beijing.
We had a local guide in each place we visited, and also a guide who went with us everywhere. Her name was Shi (I realize that is a common name, and her husband’s name at that), but she had a son who was the same age exactly as my grandson, so we became quite friendly. I wrote to her several times after I came home, and when she came to Los Angeles with a tour, almost ten years later, it was near my home, and I was able to meet with her for a short visit. Shortly after that we both moved, and I lost track of her. I was afraid to write to her too often–she had hinted it might not be good for her wtih the Communist Party.
She did tell us something of her experiences during the Cultural Revolution. All her parents’ property and jewelry, etc. was confiscated. I don’t know what happened to them, but she was sent to work on a tea plantation. And I don’t know how she became a guide, except that her English was perfect.
We visited a farm, the tombs, the ceramic soldiers, etc., and a number of factories. Watching the cloissonee work was my favorite. I know the whole visit was putting China’s best face forward, but I never suspected that women were so bady treated.
I’ve been taking a course in American History, and women here were not allowed to collect their own wages, own property, or have any control over their children until late in the 1800’s. We couldn’t even vote until 1920. Now, even though women are in the workplace doing many of the same jobs as men, their pay is on the average about 20 to 30% below that of men. So we women still have a long way to go.
Again, your talk was an eye opener,and you were a charmer. I shall read your books as soon as I get a chance.
My very best wishes,
Lois Collins
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