Translation of: Zhongguo hao nü ren.

Translated from the Chinese.

This translation originally published: London : Chatto & Windus, 2002.

Selection of stories and anecdotes by Chinese women originally presented on the radio programme: Words on the night breeze.

Prologue -- My journey towards the stories of Chinese women -- Girl who kept a fly as a pet -- University student -- Scavenger woman -- Mothers who endured an earthquake -- What Chinese women believe -- Woman who loved women -- Woman whose marriage was arranged by the revolution -- My mother -- Woman who waited forty-five years -- Guomindang general's daughter -- Childhood I cannot leave behind me -- Woman whose father does not know her -- Fashionable woman -- Women of Shouting Hill -- Epilogue -- Acknowledgements.

This work presents women's stories collected by Xinran Xue when she was hosting a radio phone-in about women's lives in China. The stories reveal what it means to be a woman in today's China, telling of almost inconceivable suffering as well as love in the face of cruelty and politics.

An unprecedented, intimate account of the lives of modern Chinese women, told by the women themselves--true stories of the political and personal upheavals they have endured in their chaotic and repressive society.