If you have never been to China – or know little about it – this book by Xinran might seem like a series of bizarre anecdotes. The student who can’t open his suitcase, never mind unpack or hang up his clothes. The young woman kept as a “pet”, not allowed to play or go outside during her school years, who brutally discards her parents as soon as she lands in Britain. The perfect daughter trained to live strictly by the rules of the Di Zi Gui, a selection of ancient Confucian strictures, whose uninformed views on chastity at age 27 have all the flexibility of reinforced concrete. Story after story of children spoilt through systematic learned incompetence – or worse. Raised in what they themselves repeatedly describe as “cages” or “priso