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Mountain Girl, River Girl

by Ting-Xing Ye

In Mountain Girl, River Girl, writer Ting-xing Ye (author of A Leaf in the Bitter Wind) explores the harsh realities of life in contemporary China. Focusing on the fast friendship between Pan-pan and Shui-lian –
two teens seeking better lives who end up instead as sweatshop workers – Ye spins a tale of hardship, secrets, and survival.

Pan-pan has left her mountain home for Beijing, driven by the desire to see life outside her tiny farm village and by shame over her affliction with “Fox Stink,” an inherited and ostracizing body-odour problem. (This condition and its social stigma remained puzzling to me, even with an explanatory note from Ye.) Shui-lian, who has grown up on a cargo barge, seeks factory work to escape an unwanted marriage, but this dream is jeopardized when she and a group of other girls are gang-raped. These misfortunes bring the girls together and to their first job at a shoe factory, where they must endure appalling living and working conditions. After a workplace accident costs Shui-lian part of her thumb, the girls finally head to Beijing, where an old family friend of Pan-pan’s gives them work in her restaurant.

This is a well-written and thought-provoking tale that refuses pat resolutions or Hollywood endings. The girls’ futures remain bleak at best, and audiences will learn a lot from this sobering novel. Fans of Deborah Ellis, for example, will be drawn to this book, as will girls who like realistic fiction that deals with contemporary issues. Ye skillfully crafts believable dialogue and characters and brings the world of these two girls to life in ways that will engage readers 13 and up, although the graphic and grim content best suits older audiences.

 

Reviewer: Laurie McNeill

Publisher: Penguin Canada

DETAILS

Price: $14

Page Count: 224 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 978-0-14316812-6

Released: January

Issue Date: 2008-4

Categories:

Age Range: 13+