Choo Waihong was a corporate lawyer with top law firms in Singapore and California before she took early retirement in 2006 and began writing travel pieces for publications such as China Daily. She lived for seven years with the Mosuo tribe and now spends half the year with them in Yunnan, China.
A crisp account by a high powered Singaporean lawyer of how she renounced her former life of fifteen hour working days in a male dominated corporate world to find her feminist soul in the last matriarchal ethnic group remaining in China. Full of insights and touching descriptions, this is one of the most accessible and concrete descriptions of the Mosuo, a group more analysed than understood, putting the humanity of this tribe at the forefront of their identity. -- (01/06/2017) An accessible and sympathetic account...At its heart, this is the story of what that experience did to Choo's attitude to her own culture as she explored the customs, habits and beliefs of her new friends. It is also, sadly, a disturbing and paradoxical story of a traditional community whose unique culture has been violently ruptured by modernity. --Isabel Hilton, The Guardian A fascinating portrait of one of the world's last matriarchal societies, a land without fathers or husbands, without marriage or divorce, written by an international corporate lawyer who ditched her hectic life to embrace this Shangri-la inside deepest China. --Jan Wong, author of Beijing Confidential (02/02/2017) A refreshing and authentic portrait of a hidden society in patriarchal China. A must read for anyone studying women and alternative societies. -- (02/02/2017) A most engaging account of life among the matrilineal and matriarchal Mosuo tribe in China's Yunnan province, but also a lament to a way of life now threatened by modernity and tourism. Full of detail and telling insights into gender roles, it will appeal to armchair travellers as well as to anthropologists and sociologists. -- (02/02/2017)