ABSTRACT
More than a decade ago, Dr. Jill Scharff and I carried out our first five-day consultation to a Chinese couple. We did many more over the ensuing years. What we learned from this first couple informed our early immersion into Chinese culture and into the problems contemporary Chinese couples face. I begin with them because this book is a record of what we have learned over these years from interviewing couples and families, supplemented by reading, supervision of Chinese therapists and consultations with colleagues in China and the West interested in the challenges facing contemporary Chinese families. This couple exemplified problems stemming from deprivation and trauma, resilience and determination, and the struggle to find each other despite their own differences. The husband came from an educated urban family that had been separated during the Cultural Revolution, while the wife came from a rural, poor farming family with quarreling and the degradation of women.
