Born in the Year of the Tiger, Hu Nu,
unwanted female child, is nearly given away as a one-year-old bride in a
Chinese village. She grows up during the turmoil of the Cultural
Revolution, when traditional values are challenged by the politicized
young, and nonconformity is repressed with brutal humiliation, examples
of which she witnesses daily in her neighbourhood and in her school. Hu
Nu joins the Red Guard movement more out of fear than conviction, later
to reject it bitterly for its senseless cruelty.
Using first-person and third-person narratives, Lien Chao
captures thirty-five years of recent Chinese history through the
gripping stories of Hu Nü and her generation as they survive both
political repression in Mao’s China and outdated attitudes to women
