Xue Xinran is one of those amazing women who can change people’s lives. She did it with The Good Women of China and she may well do it again with Miss Chopsticks. This is the wonderful story of three sisters from the countryside who seek work in urban Nanjing. Their success encourages the males of the family to reassess their earlier judgment: ‘Women, are like chopsticks – utilarian and easily broken.’ Miss Chopsticks is a record of changing times in China, and of how women are becoming the ‘rafters that hold up the roof of the house.’ Xue Xinran, again, reaches out to give Chinese women a voice.

Chris Gordon is from Readings Carlton