Some of Xinran’s interactions are extraordinary. She locates practitioners of vanishing Chinese crafts — including lantern makers and the “news singers” once widely found in traditional tea houses — and meets a 90-year-old survivor of the Long March. She interviews General Phoebe, a Red Army commander born in Ohio, who managed to survive the Cultural Revolution with her rank, health and self-esteem intact. Mr. and Mrs. You, married petroleum engineers who helped tame the remote Daqing oil fields in northwest China, describe sleeping outdoors in sandstorms and surviving on an improbable diet of grapes and melons.

attached to: China Witness