KEY POINTS:
As Xinran writes in Miss Chopsticks, men in China are known as roof-beams because they are strong providers who hold up the roof of the household while women are dismissively described as chopsticks as they are merely fragile, workaday tools, to be used and then discarded.
But when
I meet the 48-year-old author whose full name is Xinran Xue for lunch at a Chinese restaurant a couple of doors down from the London flat she shares with her husband Toby Eady, I wonder whether I am a sturdy example of manhood as I cannot handle the chopsticks and have to request a fork and spoon.
"I always use chopsticks", says Xinran. "Toby asked me why and I said when you use chopsticks, it's like you make a completion with each mouthful, you know one piece of noodle, one piece of bean ... you understand people through the food they eat. When someone wants to learn kung fu, the master will tell you the last test is how to eat, how much you can eat, how well you can eat, how quickly you can eat ... that means your personality is very strong."
Given my lack of dexterity with the chopsticks, I assume I have proved a disappointment but Xinran assures me I did fine, although I could have eaten more.
Miss Chopsticks is Xinran's first novel after three works of non-fiction. Her first book The Good Women of China grew out of Words on the Night Breeze, a talkback radio show about women's issues that the Beijing-born author hosted in Nanjing for eight years before moving to London in 1997.
Miss Chopsticks centres around three sisters who have not been given actual names and are simply known as Three, Five and Six who move to the big city to escape the drudgery of country life.
However, the novel is not a significant departure for Xinran as it is closely based on experiences of three young, unrelated women they became sisters to protect their identities that she met in Nanjing, Beijing and Shanghai.
"I don't know how to write fiction, says Xinran. This is my big problem because you have to create the story, the characters and the structure."
Xinran also hopes her books will dispel common western assumptions about China.
"There are so many different levels to China but westerners try to make it into one shape and colour, she says. When they talk about China, its human rights, the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square - it's like nothing else has happened in-between. I am deeply hurt by how little people know about our nation and our culture. I ask people about what they know of Chinese culture and they mention Chinese food and the Cultural Revolution. But we have a long history and lots of beautiful books, plays and music."
