Cinderella in China

She was a foundling in her own family, shunted to adoptive parents for two years, then to the edge of China, to a fishing village on the East China Sea, and to a furious, alcoholic grandfather and a grandmother sold at 12 into marriage for some pottage, and never given a name. Is that colourful enough for you?

But there is more: the life story of the young Chinese filmmaker and novelist Xiaolu Guo makes Cinderella’s seem bland. The hovel she lived in until she was seven was on Anti-Pirates Passage. Her grand-father, a failed and bitter fisherman, lost his livelihood in the 1970s, when the Chinese state collectivised fishing and stole everyone’s boats. In the village, Guo was barely fed, often ate nothing but kelp, and heard the sounds of domestic violence all over the streets, in the din of raised voices and thrown furniture. This was not the last of the violence: her grandfather killed himself by drinking pesticide.