Learning about history is often most easily approached through looking at individual lives and this book achieves this very well. The focus on four women, living different but linked lives in 1980s/90s China gives real insight into the culture, the roles of women, the harshness of a move from a rural society to an industrial one. It feels personal and intimate in a way that conventional history does not and so is perfect for those who hesitate over non-fiction but want to learn more about a very different way of life in the near past.

On a revelatory portrait of life in contemporary China, told through the stories of four Chinese women born in the 1980s and 1990s. Reading this book opened my eye to what it’s like to be living in contemporary China, but also moved me via the stories of these courageous women.⁣
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The writer Yuan Yang herself is a Europe-China correspondent at the Financial Times and she writes this book following a return to China in 2016 which made her feel anxious about the country’s transformation. This book is an in-depth exploration into how each of these women is trying to make lives better for themselves and their families. ⁣
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This book shows us the coming of age of the four women, i.e. Leiya, June, Siyue and Sam, and gives them voices, which I think others in the same position can easily relate to. Yuan Yang tells the stories of how these women perservere in doing what they believe is right, from attending universities to becoming an activist. I was humbled by what I read as it’s hard to imagine what it must be like for the women.⁣
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“Leiya, Dan, Siyue, June and Sam are all unusually accomplished idealists; if they weren’t, they wouldn’t have tried to do improbable things. They are open to new ideas and self-transformation; they reflect deeply and face their challenges, while also finding resilience through their loving relationships with family and friends. ⁣
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They demonstrate the creative ability of humans to transform themselves, and to make possible what was previously unimaginable – particularly when in supportive, like-minded communities.”⁣

An important book.

A really fascinating and surprisingly gripping history of China since the 1980s through the lives of four millennial women, each with a profoundly entrepreneurial spirit. The focus on four very different women and their families humanises the economic and social history and shows clearly how laws and slogans trickle into lived experience. Once i started I couldn't put it down.

Really well-researched, yet personal and intimate. A great insight into contemporary China and a peek into one slice of being a working woman.

Keen to read this as I very much enjoy learning about life in China. This book is well written and tells the story of several characters over a period of six years. Not always easy to read, China is a very different culture to our own.
possibly a bit young for me- I wanted to know more about the future

In 'Private Revolutions', Yuan Yang tells the stories of 4 women born in China in the 1980's and 1990's. Alongside Yang's own experiences of growing up in post Mao China, this novel shows how the cultural and economic policies established in that time continue to directly impact upon family life.

Some time ago I read Xinran's novel that has a similar brief and loved it. However, whilst when Yuan Yang is talking about her own life there is a vivacity and immediacy that draws the reader in, I didn't feel that with her depiction of the other 4 women's stories. This was a shame, as the contrast between their experiences and many of those in the west is sharp and shocking.

In the vein of The Good Women of China and Factory Girls, Yuan Yang tells the stories of four millennial women coming of age in a fast-changing China.

Leiya, Siyue, June and Sam are all engaging protagonists: ordinary, remarkable young women. Yang weaves their stories together to represent a cross-section of the modern female experience in China, a world of breakneck change. Yang tackles some weighty themes and sprawling political concepts - economic reform, emerging labour movements and the pressures of urbanisation - but by keeping a tight focus on her four subjects, she keeps these issues intimate and relevant. I felt like I learned a lot without really trying: Yang's fluid, personable prose makes for a compelling read.

Private Revolutions is an impressive piece of biographical non-fiction: a coming of age story not just of four young women, but of twenty-first centry China itself.

So much of what I read about China feels abstract - the changing economy, demographics, the opportunities or lack of for educated young people. Private Revolutions really humanises these issues, gives you a sense of what it's like to be a young woman living in China now.

It features case studies of four young women from different backgrounds, describing their childhoods, coming of age and their adult lives. Some of the experiences are universal - disagreements with parents, falling in and out of love, balancing political and social commitments with career ambitions and the need to earn a living.

Other aspects are particular - such as the way many children in rural areas are brought up by grandparents as their parents move to the city to work, the boarding schools they attend in nearby towns, and the way life chances are limited by a person's hukou. This is the household registration that determines access to education, healthcare and other government services, with the best opportunities falling to people with a city hukou.

Private Revolutions highlights the complexity and nuance in these women's lives, as they negotiate the constraints and opportunities in contemporary China.

I read an eARC of this book so thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley.

This was a great book to read when I’ve been trying to read more non-fiction. It was written in such a compelling way that I found myself flying through it. The author explores the lives of four different women in China. Some we meet them as children, but all of them we see their creativity and ingenuity to solve problems, strive for more and succeed.

These are four inspiring women with different backgrounds, education and family. Working in different fields, married or single, with and without children and we see them navigating the challenges they face with great determination, looking to improve lives for their children, families, communities. This was a fascinating look at different people’s lives and I felt like I learnt a lot from reading this book.

I was really intrigued by the premise of this book - I have read a few books set during the 1950s and 60s in China, but this was fascinating as it covered the era I grew up in, of the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. It was really interesting to have a glimpse of how China pivoted from rural farming labour to manufacturing and education in huge cities. The women had many things in common, particularly the movement of their families to the cities, and some were more successful than others. It really painted a picture of how attitudes have changed over the past few decades, and how the internet and technology have had an impact, especailly for workers' and womens' rights which are both woefully inadequate. A very interesting factual read.

An astonishing, painstaking and often painful to read work, about the lives of four modern individual Chinese women set against the wider and almost inconceivably vast population of hundreds of millions of people and hundreds of years of tradition.
Written by a Chinese-British journalist, Yuan Yang traces the lives of these young women during the economic boom of the 1980s when opportunities opened up, but demanded a move from rural poverty to the more affluent cities.
But my goodness, are there hurdles to overcome. So many traditional rules and regulations about residency and consequent entitlement or limitation, traditionally, exhaustingly long hours toiling in factories or on the land, missed opportunities and family pressures. But in their own, and very different ways, these four do overcome these hurdles, stumbling at times,maybe, but overall, successfully. And the lives they build for themselves are testament to courage, determination and initiative. And have massive impacts on many others.

This is an important book, which I will never forget.
Bravo Yuan Yang and thank you #NetGalley and Bloomsbury publishing plc (UK and ANZ) for my re-release download.

This biography tells the stories of 4 women in China who've been negotiating the hurdles to rise upwards in China. Each chapter focuses on one of the women and tells the next segment of their story. What comes across within the narrative are:
- Absent parents who are always away in the cities working so children are brought up by grandparents in the villages (which made me wonder how the children came to be in the first place...)
- The abject poverty in the villages and their subsistence farming
- The truly terrible working hours for anyone in a factory (7am to 9pm plus "optional" (i.e. mandatory) overtime)
- A permit system which determines which schools you can apply for and where, which is very difficult to update if the family moves
- A culture which doesn't expect children from villages to achieve anything so doesn't encourage them to aspire
- Non-existent health & safety so any workplace injuries are likely to be severe / career limiting

The book lets itself down by its dry, clinical tone. The above list (and there's plenty more in the book) should provoke outrage in the reader but the tone just narrates the above in a neutral tone. As such, it is easy to let the injustices faced by these women just wash over you, which they shouldn’t.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Years ago, I read and enjoyed a book called The Good Women of China by Xinran, about ordinary women in that vast country, and how diverse their lives were, and how common some of the persistent themes of women's lives are, including misogyny, poverty and caregiving.

This book is set in a slightly different time period, at a time of transition for China. But in the telling of the events of four womens' lives, once again some of those common themes pop up, and we find much that is relatable in the stories of Leiya, Sam, Siyue and June.

This book is less emotional than the earlier one I mentioned, but there is much to learn from it and to think about. Definitely a book for those who are interested in China, in women's lives, and in encountering those who meet adversity with the unflinching determination to follow their dreams.

This is the book I've been wanting to read for some time: an inside account of normal female lives in today's China as the country oscillates between a managed economy and the new capitalism. Yang tells four stories of different young women who deal with the issues we all do as we mature but with the additional background of a changing China. Dealing with education, work, family, what it might mean to be an activist in a repressive regime, this is enlightening for the way difference is represented, and for the way these female lives are completely relatable.

At times the writing is a little dry but the contents are illuminating and informative.