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Xinran has written one of the most powerful accounts of the lives of Chinese women. She has gained entrance to the most pained, secret chambers in the hearts of Chinese mothers -- students, successful businesswomen, midwives, peasants -- who, whether as a consequence of the single-child policy, destructive age-old traditions, or hideous economic necessity, have given up their daughters. Xinran beautifully portrays the "extra-birth guerrillas" who travel the roads and the railways, evading the system, trying to hold on to more than one baby; naive young girl students who have made life-wrecking mistakes; the "pebble mother" on the banks of the Yangtze River still looking into the depths for a male heir; and Little Snow, the orphaned baby fostered by Xinran but confiscated by the state.