Born in the Year of the Tiger, Hu Nu, unwanted female child, is nearly given away as a one-year-old bride in a Chinese village. She grows up during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, when traditional values are challenged by the politicized young, and nonconformity is repressed with brutal humiliation, examples of which she witnesses daily in her neighbourhood and in her school. Hu Nu joins the Red Guard movement more out of fear than conviction, later to reject it bitterly for its senseless cruelty. Using first-person and third-person narratives, Lien Chao captures thirty-five years of recent Chinese history through the gripping stories of Hu Nü and her generation as they survive both political repression in Mao's China and outdated attitudes to women.