China Witness

China Witness is the personal testimony of a generation whose stories have not yet been told. Here the grandparents and great-grandparents of today sum up in their own words - for the first and perhaps the last time - the vast changes that have overtaken China's people over a century. The book is at once a journey by the author through time and place and a memorial to those who have lived through war and civil war persecution invasion revolution famine modernization Westernization - and have survived into the 21st century. We meet everyday heroes now in their seventies eighties and nineties from across this vast country - a herb woman at a market retired teachers a legendary 'double-gun woman' Red Guards oil pioneers an acrobat a female general a lantern maker taxi drivers and more- those whose voices as Xinran says 'will help our future understand our past'.