Issue #0

Chinese Lives

Plot

Over sixty startling voices--voices of ordinary people, talking about the ordinary and extraordinary events in their lives--make up this remarkable book, the first of its kind ever to come from China. A sixty-four-year-old woman, a former prostitute sold to a brothel in Shanghai at fourteen, tells of the thousands of men she has slept with. A thirteen-year-old boy chats as he sells popcorn on the sidewalk. A prison guard talks of his work, followed by the prisoner he's guarding--convicted for raping and murdering his sister. an elderly hairdresser recounts how he could always tell when trouble was coming because "all the educated people stopped having their hair done right away!" A bookseller describes regularly pulping his stock as political fashions in literature change. A hitchhiking hippie, an enterprising restaurateur, a pop singer, a bus conductor: these are the people Zhang Xinxin and Sang Ye, two Chinese journalists, encountered as they traveled the breadth of their country. Their interviews take us into worlds Westerners could never penetrate, and offer the sorts of frank, informal conversations you'd hear on a train, in a waiting room, on a bus or while shopping. The cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, student activism, purges, and economic upheaval--all the expected "events" of recent Chinese history are there, but witnessed through the lens of everyday life. -- Back cover