Xinran Xue

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Xinran Xue is a British-Chinese journalist and broadcaster, born in Beijing (Beping) in 1958 . Xue often uses her first name, Xinran, to identify herself as the author of work.

In the late 1980s, she began working for Chinese radio and went on to become one of China's most successful journalists. In 1997 she moved to London, where she initially worked as cleaner. In London, she began work on her seminal book about Chinese women's lives The Good Women of China, a memoir relating many of the stories she heard while hosting her radio show ("Words on the Night Breeze") in China. The book is a candid revelation of many Chinese women's thoughts and experiences that took place both during and after the Cultural Revolution when Chairman Mao and Communism ruled the land. The book was published in 2002 and has been translated into numerous languages. Her second book Sky Burial was a fictionalized account of a true story involving a newlywed who spent 30 years looking for her lost husband in Tibet.

She now has a regular column in The Guardian and many western media outlets. She is married to Toby Eady (whose mother is Mary Wesley) and has a son named Pan Pan Xue from a previous relationship.

Other books by her in English are:

What the Chinese Don’t Eat (2006). A collection of short articles originally published in The Guardian about the similarities and differences between China and the United Kingdom.

Miss Chopsticks (2007). Set in modern China, three young women called Three, Five and Six come from a tiny village to the city of Nanjing. Events are quite ordinary, shopping and food and work and small confusions, but it gives you a strong feeling for the unfamiliar social values.