"If you come here rescuing kidnapped women, we won't have any wives left! Pull harder!"
So speaks a character in Chinese author Jia Pingwa's novel "Broken Wings," flavorfully translated into English this year by Nicky Harman. A policeman and a journalist have accompanied a woman into the Loess plateau of north-central China. The woman has traced her kidnapped daughter, Butterfly, to a village there, where she has been sold as a "wife."
