Private Revolutions: Brilliant, often tragic tales of life for women in modern China

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Yuan Yang is not a stylist, but a reporter, and her straightforward prose makes Private Revolutions a compelling read

correspondent for the Financial Times. In Private Revolutions, she tracks the stories of four Chinese women of similar age. They are successful millennials, perhaps regarded as the embodiment of nouveau riche China - “one-child policy” beneficiaries who pay in cash for their homes and drive fancy cars.

Education, family and, most importantly, money propel Yang’s narrative. June’s mother worked in a coal mine to send her daughter to school, only to be killed in an accident, “white teeth… visible under lips caked in black dust”. June, who now runs her own company, used to walk seven hours to be home on weekends, occasionally splurging 5 RMB on a bus. Leiya took a job at a factory, where she made 1,000 RMB a month.

Chinese, monosyllabic and staccato, is a difficult language to translate. Yang, whose narratives are culled from interviews and diaries, represents these women honestly, but as a result, the writing can be flat. For example: “ realised that rural kids simply ditched school and got jobs, but city kids knew how to scrape by while paying the minimum level of attention to remain at school.” When Yang describes herself in the introduction and epilogue, she is more fluid.

Yang’s parents have doctorates, and she grew up in the UK. In her book, there are hints of “what if”.

 

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