At the age of five, Xiaolu Guo was told by a Taoist monk that she was “a peasant warrior” who would one day “travel to the Nine Continents”. But, for Guo, growing up in the southern Chinese fishing village of Shitang, that seemed an impossible dream. Shitang was a place where food was scarce and “gossip was the only form of entertainment”. Husbands routinely hit their wives. Guo’s grandmother, hunchbacked, with bound feet and cataract-affected eyes, endured regular beatings, finding solace only in praying to Guanyin, the goddess of mercy.
Guo has written novels in Chinese and English, and was one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2013. This memoir of her life in China and Britain from the 1970s is utterly compelling.