Author Archives: wendywelch

The Monday Book: Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother by Xinran

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Trigger warning: this book hits almost every trigger there is.

Xinran started listening to mothers in China tell stories of having to kill their girl babies in rural areas, and broadcasting them on her radio program. What happened startled her: urban people called in with their own stories. When she started broadcasting these as well, the urban mothers got very little sympathy. Other women called them names.

Chinese suicide rates among women are hyper-high. This is an incredibly sad and yet insightful book. The stories start in rural areas with the water placed in birthing rooms for women to wash a firstborn son or drown a firstborn daughter. It’s that blatant. Don’t ask about the slops pails.

If you make it past this chapter, some of the amazing stories spread across women who took changes, women who were given no chances, women who didn’t have options, and women who did. I admire Xinran’s spread of experiences (including her own as a foster mother not allowed to continue under the one-child policy). Her assessment of the Chinese government’s disinterest in how policies affect actual families is fascinating, as is her ability to differentiate between urban and rural thinking with its layers of subtleties.

I started this book twice, because of the early chapter about direct killings in rural areas. It’s not an easy book to read, but its information is neither sensationalized nor accusatory. She’s just writing down the stories and the feelings that went with them.

In light of China’s recent change in policy to inviting more children, I went back and made myself finish this narrative journalism book. I’m glad I did, but state clearly it’s not necessarily something everyone will be comfortable reading. Triggers include domestic violence, poverty, rape, and victim blaming. Read carefully.

Vive the Auld Alliance

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Jack makes it in time with his guest Wednesday post – –

This week is the 35th anniversary of the founding of Greentrax Records based in Edinburgh and the brainchild of Ian Green. There’s plenty on-line about the history of the label and how it was built over the years, but here’s some personal connections.

I first met Ian when he was still in the police and running a folk club called ‘FuzzFolk’ in the centre of Edinburgh. Later we met again when he was involved in the annual Edinburgh folk festival. After the label was up and running I was one of the lesser known performers he contracted with for an album of songs.

But there’s a far more interesting connection – –

I helped start a folk band called ‘Heritage’ in the mid-1970s and in the early 1980s we recorded music in my living room which we had copied to cassettes to sell at gigs. One of the cassettes wound up with Ian and he re-labeled it and put it out as a GreenTrax album.

A couple of years later he was attending an industry fair in Cannes in France and met up with a guy who owned a company called ‘Playasound’ that specialized in music from various countries around the world. They didn’t have one for Ecosse (Scotland). What they did have were shops all over the world in French speaking countries.

So a recording made on a borrowed tape recorder ended up in shops all over the world and because Ian was always meticulous about paying royalties we started getting serious amounts of money. Yikes! We might have to pay tax – – –

We all knew the band was coming to an end. We had progressed musically but we had all moved on. But how to avoid the tax stuff? Use it in a final project. We had lots of really good stuff, so invest in a final recording. Our first studio recording had been at Temple Records with Robin Morton, so we decided the final one should be there too.

A few weeks ago I got an email from Ian to say that he would celebrate the anniversary by re-issuing the very first compilation album from the 1990s – ‘Music and Song of Scotland’. There’s a track from my songs album and another from our percussionist Lindsay Porteous, but there is also one from that faraway living room recording.

Here’s to many more years of Greentrax – – –