女同志

As China moves from a planned to a market economy in the 1980s and 1990s, Wan Li gives up teaching and joins the propaganda section of the Women's Federation in Nanzhou, a small town in the Jiangnan region. Her friend Yi Doudou tells her the show is about to begin, but Wan Li, idealistic and eager, cannot yet see what she means. Through the acting section head, Yu Jianfang, and the federation's chair, Sister Xu, she finds out how quietly rules, rivalries and favours shape office life. Over more than ten years in the city's government offices she admires and envies the women around her, fights with and makes use of the men, and slowly learns to handle the unspoken tensions of power while trying to keep her own sense of what is right.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Politics (assigned by AI)

Set in

China, 1980s–1990s

First published

2005 by Chunfeng Literature and Art Publishing House

Author's age

50 when first published