Xinran was born in Beijing in 1958 and moved to London in 1997 to write for The Guardian. She is author of The Good Women of China, a seminal book about the lives of Chinese women, and Sky Burial. Her charity, The Mothers’ Bridge of Love, was founded to help disadvantaged Chinese children and to build a bridge of understanding between the West and China.
“Xinran’s interactions are extraordinary. . . . [She] uses a wide
range of stories—of public-works projects and persecutions, romance
and reeducation—to show how China’s masses clung to scraps of
individuality amid the deadening conformity of the communist
system.” —New York Times Book Review
"As Xinran crisscrosses the vast country, she proves herself to be
a tenacious conduit for gently urging remarkable histories onto the
page and even on film, recording the memories and lives of her
elderly Chinese witnesses." —The San Francisco Chronicle
“Extraordinary in-depth interviews with a dozen unlikely survivors
of the cultural revolution (the Policeman, the Acrobat, the Lantern
Maker). This brilliant work of oral history—by a sort of Chinese
Studs Terkel—gives a completely riveting glimpse of everyday life
behind Mao’s bamboo curtain and subtly reflects on the politics of
memory and what may be yet to come.” —The Guardian, Best Books of
2008
“Xinran doesn’t treat her subjects like something from a 1945
newsreel, the dutiful witnesses of history’s march. She pokes them
and flatters them; she gets excited by their stories and on
occasion cries along with them. . . . We see the red lines
that many Chinese still draw for themselves in public discourse, or
even privately, the boundaries they dare not cross even today. No
other style of storytelling could have exhibited them with more
clarity or greater rawness.” —The Times (London)
“Invaluable social history that textbooks don’t reveal.” —Kirkus
Reviews
“A stirring, startlingly honest account of life under Chairman Mao
and the current reformers revamping the socialist state. . . .
Proof of how resilient and tough the Chinese people are. . .
. Xinran does not leave out the average people who were
the backbone of the republic . . . all of whom reveal a rich,
multi-faceted national history that celebrated individualism as
well as collective achievement. . . . The author puts a bow on
these candid interviews with a final set of astute observations in
an especially noteworthy book.” —Publishers Weekly (starred
review)
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