Read this book some time ago, so much so that I'd forgotten most part of it. But I remembered being quite captivated by the story of 3 sisters who moved from rural China to a big city (Nanjing). Suffice it to say, even though they were still within China, it was a big culture shock to them. the three sisters were named, Three, Five and Six. Three was the first to arrive in Nanjing and eventually scored a job in a restaurant/ food stall because of her "display artist" skills- she was able to arrange vegetables enticingly. Two other sisters joined her in the big city and all managed to carve out a decent living for themselves, thus changing their father's mind of how daughters are like chopsticks. Their father had liken them to chopsticks as he felt that daughters are easily broken like chopsticks and thus, are unable to support "the roof of a house". Having only been able to produce daughters, the father often felt disgraced. But after his daughters come back with wads of cash from the city, he had to admit that daughters were not as worthless as he had once thought. The characters were loosely based on people whom Xinran had came across and befriended when in China.
This book was very simply written, with no fancy words or plots. But I like it for its pureness and simplicity. I am really looking forward to getting my hands on Xinran's other non-fiction work: The good women of china: hidden voices. Saw it in Popular bookstore but it was a tad too expensive to buy: it costs more than 20 bucks!
