She got on the case, bullying the reluctant police to do something about it.

This letter was the first of many to appeal to Xinran for practical help. The rest of the villagers were unconcerned, and the boy knew that if they found out he had written to Xinran his family would be expelled from the village. The man was so afraid she would run away that he had tied her around the waist with a thick, iron chain which was rubbing her raw. She received a letter from a boy who lived in a village 240km from Nanjing, where a crippled, 60-year-old man had bought a young wife, who turned out to be 12 and had been kidnapped for the purpose. It happened just four months after Words on the Night Breeze began broadcasting. The first story in the book is one of personal triumph for Xinran, although she would never frame it in such a crass way. If ever we needed evidence that extreme ideologies narrow and twist people's humanity, it is here in these stories of lovelessness, fear and cruelty. She firmly believes in the lightness that can be achieved in a person's life through the speaking of sad experiences.

She was talkback host-cum-confidante-cum-social worker. Xinran displays these consequences in the most humane way possible: at the level of individuals and families in what appears as a series of short stories, linked by Xinran's often active and always intense involvement. No one living in China escaped the consequences of the political movements of the 20th century.

Over the eight years she hosted the show from 1989, Xinran went from being an unknown and relatively naive presenter to a celebrity. Through this little window roared the whispering voices of people who had never before dared to open their mouths. Xinran's radio show was monitored and censored but despite the risks, it created and answered a desperate need among the people of China. It was ground-breaking and brave, as discussing personal issues in public could still be perceived as an offence by the authorities. Xinran's evening radio programme, Words on the Night Breeze, was bravely designed to 'open a window so people could allow their spirits to cry out and breathe after the gunpowder-laden atmosphere of the previous 40 years'. But, instead of following one family through the upheavals of 20th-century Chinese history - through feudalism, nationalism, communism, the Cultural Revolution to the Great Leap Forward - Xinran has drawn on the stories she heard from 1989-1996 as a journalist and talkback host for the Nanjing-based, state-run radio station. By MARGIE THOMSON The thousands of New Zealanders who were moved by Wild Swans will find The Good Women of China more than worthy of a read.

The good women of china by xinran