Written by Chai Ling, one of the leaders of the Tiananmen Square massacre she tells all about the actual events of the massacre that we wouldn’t have learned otherwise. Partly current events and partly a memoir, this novel is sure to be eye opening and emotional.
We start by following her life as a young girl learning the disappointment and sadness she feels that she is not the boy her father always wanted. However she redeems herself in his eyes by working diligently and hard, making him proud of her. She gets out of her small town and goes to Beijing which has been a family dream long-standing. While there, she learned just how much the government did not hear the people of China as well as how mistreated and degraded the people were. She staged a protest in hopes of it leading to a better government that would connect and hear it’s people. However, this soon turned into a disaster as it erupted into a full fledged battle with tons of innocent lives lost.
Chai Ling became one of the most wanted women in China and fleeing, eventually found her way to America where she also struggling with various battles in her search for true freedom. Eventually she is led toward Jesus and that is the one and only place she finds true solace and comfort. In the novel we see true examples of how God often uses evil for good showing that good will ALWAYS triumph over evil when you have God by your side. She now leads the ministry No Girls Allowed which strives to bring freedom and comfort to the daughters of China as well as abolish China’s one child policy. Many of us don’t know but in China if you are unmarried, or under the age of twenty-five you are not allowed to bear a child. You have to have a permit to become pregnant and if you do not get approved for a permit and you get pregnant anyway you will be forced into an abortion. There is also the fact that in China, due to the one child policy, there is an issue with gendercide where boys are always chosen over girls. This leads to infanticide, child trafficking, abandoned babies, and women who commit suicide. It is truly heart-breaking and it warms my heart that Chai Ling has a ministry in help of these young Chinese women. If you want to learn more about her organization you can visit Chai Ling’s website here @ : http://www.allgirlsallowed.org/
MY THOUGHTS:
This novel really pulled my heartstrings. Imagine being forced into an abortion whether you want to or not. Imagine a government that never listens to what you have a say and living in a country where you have no voice. Some of the events in this novel really opened my eyes to real issues we also have going on in America. I must admit that our government does not always listen to what we have to say, but we have the freedom to stage a protest without having to worry about tanks coming towards us. We have the choice to have children and get married when we see fit, and best of all we have the choice to choose our religion and God is not banned here.
Toward the end of the novel when Chai Ling begins to go into depth about the one child policy was especially hard for me. I look at my own two children and I couldn’t imagine ever having to give them up. I was married when I had them, but they were both born with me under the age of twenty-five. If I would have been one of China’s women I would have been forced to abort them. China’s people are seriously suffering, particularly the women, and something that from now on I will make people aware of. I am going to recommend this book to anyone I come across. These are events and circumstances that many of us in America either aren’t aware of or we don’t really pay much heed to. Thanks to Chai Ling our eyes can be opened and we can help spread the word about these tragedy’s possibly one day preventing further ones. Hopefully one day this will all end in China and that country as well as ours can be bettered for it. If we need to be reminded of God’s miracles even through hardships and calamity’s this is the book to read. And our prayers do go heard by God’s ears whether we may believe it or not.
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of the book for review purposes from Tyndale House. All opinions expressed are mine alone.
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