Stories of Loss and Love

Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother

An extraordinarily powerful collection of heartbreaking, shocking stories, including Xinran's own experience, of Chinese mothers who have lost or had to abandon their daughters and are still searching...

This is an extraordinary book told with generosity and warmth by a brilliant storyteller

Xinran rages against the system and gives voice to adoptive mothers overseas who have rescued young Chinese girls and desolate birth mothers who grieve and feel guilt for the loss of their daughters

One would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved

No bleaker picture exists of the fate of Chinese female infants...than Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother

Harrowing and heartbreaking yet important tales

I was stunned and moved more than I can say

Xinran was born in Beijing in 1958 and was a successful journalist and radio presenter in China. In 1997 she moved to London, where she began work on her seminal book about Chinese women's lives, The Good Women of China. Since then she has written a regular column for the Guardian; appeared frequently on radio and TV and has published the acclaimed Sky Burial; the novel Miss Chopsticks; the groundbreaking book of oral history China Witness; a book of her Guardian columns called What the Chinese Don't Eat and Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother, about mothers and their lost daughters. She lives in London but travels regularly to China.

Ten chapters, ten women and many stories of heartbreak, including her own: Xinran once again takes us right into the lives of Chinese women and their lost daughters. Whether as a consequence of the single-child policy, destructive age-old traditions or hideous economic necessity, these women had to give up their daughters for adoption, others were forced to abandon them - on city streets, outside hospitals, orphanages or on station platforms - and others even had to watch their baby daughters being taken away at birth, and drowned. 
 
Personal, immediate, full of sorrow but also full of hope, this books sends a heart-rending message to Chinese girls who have been adopted to show them how things really were for their mothers, and to tell them they were loved and will never be forgotten.

Voices from a Silent Generation

China Witness

This magnificent and groundbreaking work of oral history gives voice to a forgotten generation and reveals the secret history of 20th-century China.

Right here 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

An incredibly moving and ambitious collection... There is a great deal of light in this powerful book

These stories are often heart-rending, but are recounted in a very self-effacing way by the subjects themselves... [The book] is deeply engaging and focuses almost exclusively on issues and experiences rarely discussed in China or elsewhere. It takes people to places they would not otherwise have been able to go: into the minds of previously silent witnesses...  a stunning insight into its [China's] people

If you loved Jung Chang's Wild Swans you'll love this book

This extraordinary book tells the story of 20th-century China through the voices of ordinary people... The lives of these everyday heroes make gripping reading

Remarkable... This book showcases Xinran's rare talent for getting ordinary Chinese to open up... China Witness says as much about contemporary China as it does about the recent past

China Witness 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. The book is at once a journey by the author through time and place, and a memorial to those who have lived through war and civil war, persecution, invasion, revolution, famine, modernization, Westernization - and have survived into the 21st century. We meet everyday heroes, now in their seventies, eighties and nineties, from across this vast country - a herb woman at a market, retired teachers, a legendary 'double-gun woman', Red Guards, oil pioneers, an acrobat, a female general, a lantern maker, taxi drivers, and more- those whose voices, as Xinran says, 'will help our future understand our past'.

Miss Chopsticks

Tapping into people's fascination with what is going on in modern China, Xinran (author of the bestselling The Good Women of China) has written a delightfully warm and fascinating tale of three peasant girls trying to get to grips with life in the big city.

Respect for honour and tradition, wicked humour and a vital social message combine in an appealing yet sometimes shocking read

The story remains engrossing, and when Xinran turns her attention to the frenetic streets and history of Nanjing, her own beloved hometown, the prose truly comes to life

This mood of hope, as both inspiring and ultimately attainable, is what makes Miss Chopsticks such an uplifting read

Xinran's tale will likely play on the mind for years to come

Xinran's skill lies in investigating the universal human thoughts and emotions behind the girls' naivety

Xinran weaves the fresh and touching tale of three sisters

Sisters Three, Five and Six don't have much education, but they know two things for certain: their mother is a failure because she hasn't produced a son, and they only merit a number as a name. Women, their father tells them, are like chopsticks: utilitarian and easily broken. 
 
But when they leave their home in the countryside to seek their fortune in the big city, their eyes are suddenly and shockingly opened. Together they find jobs, make new friends, and learn more than a few lessons about life...

What the Chinese Don't Eat

Xinran's popular Guardian columns collected together for the first time.

Xinran writes compassionately but unsentimentally

Since June 2003 Xinran has been writing about China in her weekly column in the Guardian. She has covered a vast range of topics from food to sex education, and from the experiences of British mothers who have adopted Chinese daughters, to whether Chinese people do Christmas shopping or have swimming pools. 
 
Each of her columns inspired letters and questions and more opportunities for Xinran to shed light on the culture of her native land. What the Chinese Don't Eat collects these pieces together for the first time to give one unique Chinese woman's perspective on the connections and differences between the lives of British and Chinese people today.

Sky Burial

An epic story of Tibet from the author of The Good Women of China. 
 
'An epic of love, loss and wisdom - almost unbearably sad but ultimately uplifting' Mail on Sunday

A romantic epic of loss and redemption, of stoic constancy in the face of the vagaries of fate

Part family story, part mystical adventure in an alien culture, it's like Wild Swans crossed with Seven Years in Tibet

This little-known culture has been brought vividly to life through the incredible love story of Shu Wen. This story of an extraordinary woman written by an extraordinary woman will stay with you long after closing the book

As a young girl in China Xinran heard a rumour about a soldier in Tibet who had been brutally fed to the vultures in a ritual known as a sky burial: the tale frightened and fascinated her. Several decades later Xinran met Shu Wan, a Chinese woman who had spent years searching for her missing husband who had been serving as a doctor in Tibet; her extraordinary life story would unravel the legend of the sky burial. For thirty years she was lost in the wild and alien landscape of Tibet, in the vast and silent plateaus and the magisterial mountain ranges, living with communities of nomads moving with the seasons and struggling to survive. 
 
In this haunting book, Xinran recreates Shu Wen's remarkable journey in an epic story of love, loss, loyalty and survival. Moving, shocking and, ultimately, uplifting Sky Burial paints a unique portrait of a woman and a land, both at the mercy of fate and politics.

Hidden Voices

The Good Women Of China

'When I finished reading - I felt my soul had been altered' Amy Tan

This is a book from deep in the heart of China. As shocking as it is revealing... An extraordinary and eye-opening read

Xinran's "Good Women of China" are all strong, strikingly resourceful characters who offer unforgettable insights into the past and present of Chinese women's lives

The Good Women of China demands attention

[Xinran] writes compassionately but unsentimentally, dramatising the stories like gripping fiction

For eight groundbreaking years, Xinran presented a radio programme in China during which she invited women to call in and talk about themselves. Broadcast every evening, Words on the Night Breeze became famous through the country for its unflinching portrayal of what it meant to be a woman in modern China. Centuries of obedience to their fathers, husbands and sons, followed by years of political turmoil had made women terrified of talking openly about their feelings. Xinran won their trust and, through her compassion and ability to listen, became the first woman to hear their true stories. 
 
This unforgettable book is the story of how Xinran negotiated the minefield of restrictions imposed on Chinese journalists to reach out to women across the country. Through the vivid intimacy of her writing, the women's voices confide in the reader, sharing their deepest secrets for the first time. Their stories changed Xinran's understanding of China forever. Her book will reveal the lives of Chinese women to the West as never before.

Xinran

Unforgettable insights into the past and present of Chinese women's lives

Extraordinary...told with generosity and warmth by a brilliant storyteller

Financial Times, Message From An Unknown Chinese Mother

Economist, Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother

An absorbing, often startling, always persuasive exploration of contemporary China

The remarkable truth of China’s one-child generations

'Fast-paced and punchy ... accomplished' Independent 
 
With journalistic acumen and a novelist's flair, Xinran tells the remarkable stories of men and women born in China after 1979 - the recent generations raised under China's single-child policy. At a time when the country continues to transform at the speed of light, these generations of precious 'one and onlies' are burdened with expectation, yet have often been brought up without any sense of responsibility. Within their families, they are revered as 'little emperors' and 'suns', although such cosseting can come at a high price: isolation, confusion and an inability to deal with life's challenges. 
 
From the businessman's son unable to pack his own suitcase, to the PhD student who pulled herself out of extreme rural poverty, Xinran shows how these generations embody the hopes and fears of a great nation at a time of unprecedented change. It is a time of fragmentation, heart-breaking and inspiring in equal measure, in which capitalism vies with communism, the city with the countryside and Western opportunity with Eastern tradition. Through the fascinating stories of these only children, we catch a startling glimpse of the emerging face of China.

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Xinran

Praise for Buy Me the Sky

Unforgettable insights into the past and present of Chinese women's lives

Extraordinary...told with generosity and warmth by a brilliant storyteller

One would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved

Unforgettable insights into the past and present of Chinese women's lives

Extraordinary...told with generosity and warmth by a brilliant storyteller

One would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved

Unforgettable insights into the past and present of Chinese women's lives

Extraordinary...told with generosity and warmth by a brilliant storyteller

One would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved

Books by Xinran

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