Q: What was the most difficult situation you faced in your search to bring the hidden lives of China's women to public attention?

A: Lots of things were difficult. It was hard to control my emotions. Some stories, like those in chapters one, eleven and fifteen of my book, I couldn't present on air at all. Whenever I came back from interviews in the poor countryside, I could hardly speak. I couldn't forget about the lives of those women, who lived as if it was 500 years ago. I couldn't answer people's questions about my childhood either.

Also, as I told you before, four major topics could not be discussed, but they are very basic human needs which are central to our lives. Therefore it was very difficult for me to talk with people directly about these important things. I had to find other ways to explain my opinions on these subjects.

I had to face and struggle with lots of uneducated people who thought that a woman should be part of man's property according to traditional rules, and that I shouldn't talk with their women about freedom, education etc. This included some women. Sometimes I got letters with knives and bullets.

Q: Is it difficult for you personally to listen to so many painful stories? How do you cope with this?

A: I don't think I can cope with it for ever. I can control myself in the daytime with smiling and peaceful mind, but I always lose this in the night when I am woken up by dreams which are full of women's stories and my childhood. This is part of the reason why I left China. In 1997 I was having to take eight sleeping tablets to get to sleep.

Q: You left China six years ago, but you often go back to visit. How is life changing in China at the moment and is it any better for women?

A: Yes, there is a huge change in China. Last spring I saw a kind of relaxation and happiness in the eyes of many Chinese women for the first time. Although most Chinese women's position is still very low, fewer are facing death than before, even though the suicide rate of Chinese women is still among the highest in the world.

This spring I went back to China again and I saw a peasant standing in front of his very poor 'grass house' talking on a mobile phone! He told me that he was getting to know the world through communcation.

I do believe that, when people are educated and have access to enough information, they will know how to treat women better because they will find a woman is part of their human life not property.

Q: Your book has now been published in many countries in twenty-seven languages. Over the last ten months you have visited seventeen countries to talk about it. Have you found that women's lives are very different in the West?

A: Yes. Western women have had something that the Chinese never had before the 1990s: freedom of religion, freedom of press, a dependable legal system and sexual education. Power over the lives of Chinese women was with their men. Because of this, Chinese culture became very 'closed', 'hidden' and 'negative'. Before 1992 the heavy pressure of tradition meant that Chinese women lived in a kind of society without smiling, warm and positive words, even human touch like a hug. The lives of most Western women were made more tolerable by men's hugs, kisses, flowers, beautiful
words (even if they weren't true!) and financial support etc., which most women need as a kind of inspiration.

Many of the Chinese women who live overseas can't understand why so many Western women like to complain about their 'perfect lives'. I think this is because we have a different standard of good life.

Q: What kind of responses have you had to your book from readers?

A: I have been extremely moved by the reactions of readers to my book. Many people have written to me to say how much the book touched them and resonated with their lives.

I received from one woman a twenty-two page letter describing how, at the age of seven, she was sexually abused by a man as she walked the short distance from her grandmother's house to home. She was thirty-nine and had never told anyone about this experience, not even her husband. She told me how, although she had four sons, she stood in front of the mirror every day and said 'I hate men'. When she had finished reading my book she felt she could come out of her suffering corner now after forty-two years.

But my book has also moved men. At one of my talks in America a man stood up at the end and said that my book had taught him that we should take notice of the unhappy woman sitting next to us and offer her our support and love.

Q: The Good Women of China is the result of many years' research. You interviewed hundreds of women and read letters from thousands. You say at the end of the book that you wanted to write it because a 'pen had grown in your heart'. Will you write another book?

A: I finished my second book Sky Burial half a year ago. It is about a Chinese woman who spent thirty-four years in Tibet for searching her missing husband. Her husband was a military doctor, who was sent to Tibet after their wedding in the 1950s. I got this story in 1994 through a listener of my radio programme. When I sat there face to face with her, I couldn't believe how lucky I was to be hearing the whole story since I remembered hearing parts of it in the street when I was little girl.

Q: In your many years as a journalist in China, what was your happiest moment?

A: Being able to kiss and hug my son Panpan when I got back from doing an interview far away.

Reading books, listening to music, travelling and swimming without any real worries, unlike the poor women living in the countryside.

Showing to my friends some of the women's knowledge that I had learned from women all over China, such as cooking, sewing and shoe making.

Last but not least, I have to say, that one of my happiest moments was finding a "real" toilet when I was interviewing in the countryside!

At the moment, I'd like to say, I am very happy because I can tell people what I have learned on my feet and in my heart about Chinese women's lives.

Q: What do you feel makes a 'good woman'?

A: In 1995 I asked Chinese men the following questions on air:
"How many good women have you had in your life? What do you feel makes a 'good woman'?"

I got almost a thousand letters three weeks later about these two questions. But there were fewer than twenty who said they had had good women in their lives. I was very shocked by the views of Chinese men. In their letters, they gave me five points for making a good woman:
1. She never goes out and opens herself to other men.
2. She should give a son to the family tree.
3. She should be soft and warm all the time to her family and never loses her temper.
4. She never does housework wrong, burns the food or mixes clothes when she washes.
5. She should be good at sex in her husband's bed and have a beautiful appearance for showing off outside the house.

I just can't imagine there is any woman who could match this standard of 'good woman' at all! Of the Chinese women in my book, none of them is good in the traditional way. But I think they are so good because they have tried very hard to give, love and care for their families and other people!

Q: Do you feel you betrayed listeners of 'Words on the Night Breeze' when you left China?

A: No, because they are always with me when I came to London and travel in other countries where I go for them.

 

If you have any questions to ask Xinran please email xinran@randomhouse.co.uk. Xinran will answer a selection of the questions by the beginning of September.