Free Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang

off.  After years of being humiliated and treated as chattel, she was now truly surrounded by freedom.
     
    Every now and then she and her friends would put on an old Manchu performance for themselves, playing hand drums while they sang and danced.  The tunes they played consisted of very simple, repetitive notes and rhythms, and the women made up the lyrics as they went along. The married women sang about their sex lives, and the virgins asked questions about sex.  Being mostly illiterate, the women used this as a way to learn about the facts of life.
     
    Through their singing, they also talked to each other about their lives and their husbands, and passed on their gossip.
     
    My grandmother loved these gatherings, and would often practice for them at home.  She would sit on the kang, shaking the hand drum with her left hand and singing to the beat, composing the lyrics as she went along.  Often Dr.  Xia would suggest words.  My mother was too young to be taken along to the gatherings, but she could watch my grandmother rehearsing.  She was fascinated and particularly wanted to know what words Dr.  Xia had suggested.
     
    She knew they must be great fun, because he and her mother laughed so much.  But when her mother repeated them for her, she 'fell into clouds and fog."  She had no idea what they meant.
     
    But life was tough.  Every day was a battle just to survive.
     
    Rice and wheat were only available on the black market, so my grandmother began selling off some of the jewellery
     
    General Xue had given her.  She ate almost nothing herself, saying she had already eaten, or that she was not hungry and would eat later. When Dr.  Xia found out she was selling her jewellery, he insisted she stop: "I am an old man," he said.
     
    "Some day I will die, and you will have to rely on those jewels to survive."
     
    Dr.  Xia was working as a salaried doctor attached to another man's medicine shop, which did not give him much chance to display his skill. But he worked hard, and gradually his reputation began to grow.  Soon he was invited to go on his first visit to a patient's home.  When he came back that evening he was carrying a package wrapped in a cloth. He winked at my mother and his wife and asked them to guess what was inside the package.  My mother's eyes were glued to the steaming bundle, and even before she could shout out "Steamed rolls!"  she was already tearing the package open.  As she was devouring the rolls, she looked up and met Dr.  Xia's twinkling eyes.  More than fifty years later she can still remember his look of happiness,
     
    My Grandmother Mama a Manchu Doctor 77 and even today she says she cannot remember any tbod as delicious as those simple wheat rolls.
     
    Home visits were important to doctors, because the families would pay the doctor who made the call rather than his employer.  When the patients were happy, or rich, the doctors would often be given handsome rewards.
     
    Grateful patients would also give doctors valuable presents at New Year and on other special occasions.  After a number of home visits, Dr. Xia's circumstances began to improve.
     
    His reputation began to spread, too.  One day the wife of the provincial governor fell into a coma, and he called in Dr.  Xia, who managed to restore her to consciousness.
     
    This was considered almost the equivalent of bringing a person back from the grave.  The governor ordered a plaque to be made on which he wrote in his own hand:
     
    "Dr.  Xia, who gives life to people and society."  He ordered the plaque to be carried through the town in procession.
     
    Soon afterward the governor came to Dr.  Xia for a different kind of help.  He had one wife and twelve concubines, but not one of them had borne him a child.  The governor had heard that Dr.  Xia was particularly skilled in questions of fertility.  Dr.  Xia prescribed potions for the governor and his thirteen consorts, several of whom became