"A Woman Soldier's Own Story" by Xie Bingying

An autobiography of a rebellious Chinese girl who kicked off her footbindings and an arranged marriage to join the army is available in English for the first time.

By Janelle Brown

Dec. 3, 2001 | As a rebellious young woman in the oppressive China of the 1920s and '30s, Chinese feminist author Xie Bingying unbound her feet, escaped an arranged marriage, served as a soldier in two wars, lived as an impoverished bohemian single mother in Shanghai, was jailed as a Communist and became a renowned activist and author. And then she proceeded to live to the ripe old age of 93.

Bingying's autobiography, "A Woman Soldier's Own Story," was originally written in two parts, in 1936 and 1946, and helped launch her career as a preeminent Chinese feminist author. Only now, 55 years later and almost two years after her death, has her autobiography been translated into English. Translators Lily Chia and Barry Brissman -- her daughter and son-in-law -- have faithfully preserved the original work, and it's a very strange document that they have embalmed. "A Woman's Soldier's Own Story" is not only an intoxicating tale of a fierce young woman who kicks off the traces of feudal conventions, but also a quirky piece of populist pro-war propaganda straight out of revolutionary China.

Bingying's prose is an odd study in these contrasts, capturing the tensions between tradition and revolution, sentimentality and pragmatism, at a critical juncture in that country's history. At moments -- particularly when she is describing a landscape -- her words sing out with lyricism, the same kind of sentimentalized metaphorical poetics often found in traditional Chinese writing ("The clear breeze blew a fragrance of flowers across our faces, and the fragrance penetrated our hearts with the sweetness of ice cream"; "The sun climbed out of her deep blue eastern clouds like a young girl coming out of her bath, shy and smiling, moving slowly"). Turn the page, and she's coldly explaining that "I don't love anyone but myself" and that "revolutionaries do not shed tears, only blood."

Judging by her own words, Bingying must have been a strong-willed young woman. Born the daughter of a village scholar in Hunan China in 1906, she went on a hunger strike at the age of 10 until her parents allowed her to enroll in the nearby girls' school. She removed her own foot-bindings; was ejected from one school for arranging a protest parade on the national day of mourning; and published her first article at age 15. By the time she turned 20, Bingying had enrolled in the military as a female cadet in charge of propaganda and was marching north with Chiang Kai-shek to fight warlords.

After returning from the front line, Bingying was held prisoner by her parents, who forced her to comply with an arranged marriage. After three escape attempts, Bingying finally made it to Shanghai, where she enrolled in college and embarked on a life of writing and political activism, moving in with her lover. She gave birth to a daughter, only to hand her over to her mother-in-law; and when Japan invaded China in the 1930s, she promptly joined up with the military and marched off into the horizon again.

Next page: Army life: "So very pleasant and amusing"