Northern Girls: Life Goes On

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In Chinese, a person’s given name always follows their surname. Therefore, the protagonist of Northern Girls, Qian Xiaohong, has the surname Qian and the given name Xiaohong. Depending on the occasion and the familiarity between people, given names can be shortened to a repetition of the final syllable, such as Honghong for Xiaohong.

In southern China, it is common for people to refer to one another by combining the sound Ah with the final syllable in their name, for example, Ah Hong. Whilst pinyin, the standard Romanisation method for Chinese characters, has been used throughout this novel, the word Ah has been written as such to avoid confusion with the word ‘a’.

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Her. Right there. That’s Qian Xiaohong, from Hunan province.

A little over a metre and a half tall, sporting short black hair with just a hint of a curl, her round-faced look is pretty much that of a model citizen, good and decent. She’s just the sort of girl a guy wouldn’t mind taking home to meet his parents. However, her breasts — through no fault of her own — are much too large for civilised, polite society. Such breasts could not help but invite the same suspicion and groundless gossip normally saved for young widows.

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