Less than 30 hours ago I was in the hot Beijing summer and now here I am in the cold New Zealand winter. It seems like no big time difference, but my body is confused by the seasons and I couldn’t sleep.
‘Don’t blame the weather!’ A voice shouted to me, in fact, I’ve never been able to sleep a whole night with nice dreams, ever!
My nightmares started in my childhood when the Cultural Revolution took place and I became a ‘black child’ (you can get some details from my book The Good Women of China). Some dreams I have are very frightening – people beating me with thick sticks and bricks as they did in my childhood; some are very scary – an invisible man comes to my bed in the cold moon light, an event that happened to me when I was only 11 years old; some are a struggle - I am exhaustedly climbing to the top of a bloody well; some are very sad - I am dying and my son Panpan is a baby in my arms. I am crying, thinking who will bring him up and how can this tiny life be saved from war and starvation…
I can control myself in the daytime, but I can’t do this when I am dreaming.
I used to think that reading and education might erase these dreams from my brain, but 39 years of reading and studying many different things has never replaced the nightmares. I have to make my body very tired and go to bed late at night; so that I won’t be woken up by the nightmares at 2 or 3am.
Many young Chinese don’t understand why older generations always mention the ‘old days’ as if old people have nothing to talk about. I think the older Chinese are visited over again by their dreams, which are full of their painful past…
We still aren’t civilised enough to allow everyone to open up and offer their own opinions in the waking world. Therefore many of us tell our true stories only through our dreams.
Today, 6th Sep 2008, I gave my first talk to the Christchurch Book Fair. Over 500 hundred people came to listen to me and queued for signed books. I am very touched by the number of book readers in this tiny, quiet city. A German mother and daughter were both in tears and thanked me, for I said ‘we should all be honest and try to understand the past, no matter whether it was good or bad, the past is our roots…’ The daughter said, no-one in her family had told her what had happened to her grand-parents during World War Two. Her mother replied to her for me, ‘Because it is too difficult to be honest about the family past when looking to your future…’
How can we be honest and face our past? After all we all want it…
Bang-bang mang! Jiu-Ming! (Help, please! Help!)
Xinran,
As the mother of three girls adopted from China, my passion is to read anything about China.
I attend a monthly bookclub and we have chosen “Sky Burial”, I have previously read this amazing, moving and fantastic story of Shu Wen.
Please, are you able to tell me if you ever heard from Shu Wen again?
Thanks you
Mia
Hello Xin Ran, I was so moved by “The Good Women..” when I read it a while back that I wrote a song about it. I have now published a video of it on YouTube, at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0uj8y-Zyhc&fmt=18 . At the time I wrote about the song:
“Although not a “spiritual” song in the strict sense of the word, it does deal with what I consider a basic unfairness that needs to be sorted out. I have always felt some sort of love (for want of a better word) for the country of China, and its people. I read a book called “The Good Women Of China”, by Xin Ran. Xin Ran (whose name means “With Pleasure”) was a presenter of a radio programme called “Words On The Night Breeze” in a more liberated China. In this programme, she encouraged women to speak up about gross injustices and abuses that were inflicted upon them in the name of Communism. The book makes quite harrowing reading, and I was struck by the fact that many Westerners would have been unaware of the problems in China, largely because the Communists maintained a “shut-off” country, that is only just emerging from its hibernation. When I think of 1976, I think of Abba and Dancing Queen because at aged 8, that was my world. So, it’s unfair that in 1976, Mao began the “Cultural Revolution”, during which, millions of Chinese played the role of “pawns in one man’s power game” whilst the West was “dancing to Abba”.
In the song, I make the implicit comparison between the way in which someone like John Lennon had to listen to the radio under the blankets in the middle of the night, in order to listen to “forbidden” music, to the way in which these Chinese women would have seen the radio as a lifeline. There is something therapeutic about ensuring one’s struggle is known about, and in a perverse sense, the women in this book are fortunate because they have seen life in all it’s ugliness, and witnessed hope for the future.”
I hope that if you listen to the song, you like it, and thanks for inspiring me to write it. It’s taken me a long time to pluck up courage to play it to anyone. On YouTube, the “tags” I put to help it come up in peoples’ searches have lead to lots of bizarre “related” videos, which I assure you were completely unintended!!!!
Thanks again, Mark Pearce (MarkPMus on YouTube.)
Sorry, that should say 1966-1976, re the cultural revolution!
I’m very happy to get hold of this book because when I went to library that day, the librarian said that wanted to send to warehouse (making rooms for new books). When I read about “The girl who kept a fly as a pet”, I wondering that why there is such a father in this world, but I think it still exisiting now!
After reading till the end, I still have a question in my mind, why didn’t tell us about yourself, why are you single parent? You only told us about a childhood. How is your child, Panpan when you are in London, did he follow you? If you can email me because I still interest in knowing. Thanks. Hope that you can able to reply me as soon as possible.
Dear Mia：
Thanks for reading my book。
I haven’t found Shuwen yet after many years trying…but I won‘t give up!
Please give my love to your three daughters…
After –China Witness’ published last year, I am working on my new book –The Message from Unknown Mothers–. It is for all of Chinese daughters adopted from China..it would be published next year.
I hope this book could bridge mothers’ love for their dayghters..
All the best.
Dear Xinran,
I notice that The Good Women of China was published in Chinese in Shanghai in 2003. Does the Chinese edition have the same contents as the English edition or does it have some parts censored? I am interested to know about censorship in China. If it is not censored then that means there is a much freer situation for writers.
Dennis
Dear Dennis:
Thanks for your comment.
Yes, The Good Women of China was published in Chinese in China from Sep to Nov 2003 after some editing…
You are right, compare to the past, or just 10 years ago, there is a much freer in China. As each single Chinese whose age is above 50, might feel it much stronger than their children.
I am sure one day my books could be published in China without too much ‘’sensitive ’’ cutting.
We have to be honest to our past even though it could be a very painful process.
When I read this post, it brought tears to my eyes. Horrible things can happen to children, even in the quietest of places (my hometown). I, too, still have nightmares.
Anyway, My GanMama was put up for adoption after her birth. Her mother maintains, to this day, that she was so ugly that after just one look, she decided to give her away and that she never held her. When my GanMa turned 6, her adopted mother died and her adopted father, not knowing what to do with a small girl, returned her to her parents home. By that point, they had already had three more children and had no interest in treating her as anything more than a slave.
She was sent down when she was in her late teens and was subjected to all sorts of living nightmares until she finally married the first man who asked, just to escape the situation. He abandoned her and their ten year old son one day, never giving her a reason, just divorcing her and telling anyone who would listen that she was a bad woman.
Sixteen years later, I met a very wounded, but amazingly kind woman… I couldn’t speak a complete sentence in Mandarin at the time, nor could she speak more than a word or two of English, but we found a way to communicate regardless of the differences in culture, age, etc. One thing was for certain: she did not deserve the treatment she had be dealt at the hands of others. She was not a bad woman at all, nor was she ugly. In fact, I always thought her to be very beautiful… Even before I knew her well.
She came to the hospital the night my youngest son was born. It was on that night that I was unofficially adopted. By the time my youngest daughter was born, everyone knew to make two phone calls from the hospital: to my husband (who was at home with the oldest three children) and to my GanMa (who was waiting in Shijiazhuang for news from WuZhou).
She says that I was the last thing she expected, but that the arrival of the kids and myself in her life changed her life forever… As it did ours.
Her son understands and gives our relationship his full blessing, plus, he genuinely loves my children as nieces and nephews.
I am sharing this because of the book you have mentioned which will be published soon. The relationship between mothers and daughters is complicated. Especially if you were an unwanted child as was I and as was my GanMama… If your book can do anything, even in the slightest degree to help bridge the gaps that misunderstandings in such a complex relationship can cause, then God bless you.
Elizabeth
Dear Xinran,
I´m a portuguese teacher in Macau and I just want to tell you that I love your books. I´m starting now the China Witness and I´m sure I will like it. Your books made me understand a little more chinese people and culture.
Thanks (obrigada) for your books. And I hope you will write more and more.
Paula Costa
Xinran,
Ni hao ma?
Thank you for shedding light to the compelling & harrowing story about the lives of the ‘good women of China’.
I am curios to know where did you source the photos on the back cover of the book?
(Bu hao yi si, tu ran, xiang wen ni zhe jian wen ti)
Ling
I would like to purchase “China Witness” for a Chinese friend of mine. Is there a Chinese language edition? How do I order?
Just finished reading your book, and I felt personally sensibilized by it. I’m from Brazil and now I feel a huge interest in knowing China.
I just have one question… why are women like the water, after all? which theory do you agree with?
thank you for your books, Xinran! You rock!
beijinhos =)
Add A Comment