China Witness Voices From A Silent Generation Xinran by Xinran 9780307388537, 0307388530 instant download after payment.

SUMMARY:

China Witness is an extraordinary work of oral history that illuminates the diverse ways in which the Chinese perceive & understand their own history. Xinran, the acclaimed author of The Good Women of China & Sky Burial, traveled across China in 2005 & 2006, seeking out the nation’s grandparents & great-grandparents, the men & women who have experienced, firsthand, the vast changes of the modern era. In cities & remote villages, Xinran spoke with members of these generations from all tiers of society, interviewing them for the first & perhaps the last time. 

Although many of them feared repercussions for speaking freely, they spoke to Xinran with stunning candor about their hopes, fears, & struggles, & about what they have witnessed: from the Long March to land reform, from Mao to marriage, from revolution to Westernization. While the West has commonly viewed the last one hundred years in China through the single narrative lens of Mao’s rise & rule, the experience of this same period for the Chinese themselves has been infinitely more complex. 

In the same way that Studs Terkel’s Working & Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation gave us the essence of very particular times, China Witness gives us the essence of modern China–a portrait more intimate, nuanced, & revelatory than any we have had before. 

From the Hardcover edition.