Woman's Hour - Zadie Smith, Women and their Scars, Xuefei Yang and Maternity Care

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

Zadie Smith’s newest book, ‘Intimations’, was written during the early months of lockdown. It is a series of personal essays reflecting on the unprecedented situation of a worldwide pandemic, hoping to provoke readers to reflect on what has happened and what might come next. Maternity care is to be the first focus of an independent new panel set up by the Health and Social Care Committee to give ratings to pledges made by the government. Ros Bragg from Maternity Action talks about what she would expect to be looked at, and the Chair of the new panel, Dame Jane Dacre, Professor of Medical Edcation at University College London, explains how patients’ experience will form a part of this evaluation.In a new series we’re talking to women about their scars. They all talk about physical and emotional pain and the business of having to deal with other people’s reactions on a day to day basis and of coming to terms with the skin they are in. Today, Emily’s story. Xuefei Yang is one of the world’s leading classical guitarists. Born in China, she started playing guitar aged seven, less than a decade after the end of the cultural revolution at a time when guitars were not well known in the country. By aged 10 she had already given her first public appearance. She toured the world as a schoolgirl and has now performed in over 50 countries. Her latest album, Sketches of China, draws from over 2000 years of Chinese culture and music. Making it has been a long-held dream, requiring transposing traditional music for the guitar to increase the repertoire for her instrument. She talks to Jenni about the stories behind the album, the story of the kidnapped intellectual woman Wenji Cai during the Han Dynasty and why it’s important to her to celebrate Chinese culture now.

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Thursday 6th August. Good morning. Xuefei Yang is one of the world's leading classical guitarists. Tomorrow she releases Sketches of China, drawing on more than 2,000 years of her homeland's culture and music. We'll hear a sample of her album. A new independent panel is being set up to evaluate government pledges in health and social care.

Why will maternity care be its first concern? And the next in our series on scars and how we learn to live with them. Emily's as a result of the harm she did to herself. Zadie Smith was named as one of Granter's 20 best young British novelists in 2003 and again in 2013, and she has frequently proved the prediction to be accurate. Her first novel, White Teeth, won just about every literary prize going. On Beauty was shortlisted for the Man Booker and won the Orange, and NW was shortlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction. She's a professor of fiction at New York University and a member

of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She's also published two collections of essays, so it's not surprising the coronavirus pandemic, spent partly in New York and partly in London, drove her to write what she calls Intimations, six essays written during the early months of lockdown. This is from the one called Something to Do. What strikes me at once is how conflicted we feel about this new liberty and or captivity. On the one hand, like pugs who've been lifted out of a body of water, our little limbs keep pumping on, as they did when we were hurrying off to our workplaces. Do we know how to stop? Those of us from Puritan cultures feel work must be done.

And so we make the cake or start the gardening project or begin negotiation with the other writer in the house for those kid-free hours each day in which to work on something. We make banana bread. We sew dresses. We go for a run. We complete all the levels of Minecraft. We do something. Then photograph that something and not infrequently put it online. Reactions are mixed, even in our own hearts. Even as we do something we simultaneously accuse ourselves. We use this extremity as only another occasion for self-improvement, another pointless act of self-realisation. But isn't it the case that everybody finds their capabilities

returning to them, even if it's only the capacity to mourn what we have lost? We have delegated so much. Sadie, what prompted you to begin these essays very early in the lockdown? I don't know, a psychological condition that means I have to type things to feel better probably. I just, I think like a lot of people felt very out of control and this is my way of dealing with that feeling. You write at the end of the essay from which you've just read an extract something to do that you're comforted to discover you're not the only person who has

no idea what life is for why is that a comfort? Well it's nice not to be alone in these extreme feelings. And I was very struck by the sudden emptiness, you know, silence inside yourself when you're not permanently distracted by tasks, things to do. Maybe it's what Buddhists know when they sit and meditate for eight hours, but for the rest of us, I think it was something of a shock to find how, in my case, how little inner resources you had, in fact. And for me, the book is a demonstration of that. I fell back on the only thing I know, which is typing.

There's an essay called Peonies, where you become fascinated by some tulips that are growing and garish out in the street and you want them to be pianists. Why? You know a lot of fiction writing particularly is a kind of rewrite and kind of aesthetic re-representation of experience and I'm always aware of that in myself and I wanted to write an essay being honest about that instinct and about the gap between that kind of aestheticization of your life and your real life and I thought about it I mean obviously all novelists know that that's their personal experience but I thought of all the many writers we have everywhere now everyone's a writer now online all the time daily and it seemed to me just sometimes talking to my

students or other friends that there is also a large gap between that daily performance that unpaid labor that everybody's doing and their real lives and I wanted to make the connection to try and remember what it what a real life is. In the essay called Suffering Like Mel Gibson, you write about a conversation between two working class women, and you're at pains to point out that they are working class women, talking about a rich woman they've seen who's wheeling her child down 8th Avenue and the child has an iPad. How exactly did that conversation go? Oh, that's something that happened to me when one of my kids was very young and I was standing behind them in a line.

And they were talking about the outrage of seeing a small child with an iPad. And I was getting very enraged with them and wanted to get involved in the conversation. But as they spoke, I realized that I was thinking of the effect of technology on small children, and they were thinking entirely reasonably of the outrage of giving something worth $900 to a small child. And it just struck me that that conversation is something I would have understood,

say, 10 years ago. And that whenever you move through life, there's this constant change in your awareness, dependent on your class, dependent on your position. Obviously, my position has changed. So what came to me was a kind of liberal ethic argument about technology instead of a vital economic argument about technology.

Noting that in myself, I suppose when I'm writing, I'm trying to encourage other people to notice these differences between themselves and others and not always put themselves on the winning side of every difference. How much of your time as a writer is spent just, what you could call ear-wiggingwigging I suppose overhearing other people's conversations oh man I mean I don't I don't do it consciously I don't want people to avoid me in the street but it's certainly the case particularly when I was younger that the buses and trains

any kind of communal situation um has always been thrilling for me to hear a variety of people sitting next to each other speaking often from completely different worlds right next to each other. That is my happy place, I suppose. And it still continues. I do often have an ear up, but I never have a pad and paper. I'm not a, you know, vulture after human experience up but I never have a pad and paper I'm not a you know vulture after human experience but I'm I'm entertained and always curious it always strikes me when I hear someone speak my god you live in a completely different world than me and from the person next to you and from the person next to them and that's the animating thing for me when I'm writing but even though you haven't got a pad to to write these things and record them, how much do they just stick in your head and appear in your fiction?

I mean, I come from a family of, I don't know, imitators, right? My brother is a comedian, my other brother is a rapper. So I think we listen a lot and reproduce what we hear. I think, to be honest, that's the source of a lot of different creative industries, having a decent ear. So I listen and I get pleasure out of it. And sometimes I come home maybe and repeat what I've heard to my children who really aren't interested or my husband. So it keeps me alive hearing that other voice. My own voice, voice you know I get enough of that so it's other people's voices that I'm curious about having spent the the last months partly in New York and partly in the UK how different was the experience of the virus and

the lockdown in those very different places i mean i can't really underestimate the difference i'm sure there are people listening who had experience of both i mean even now in new york i left in late may and every man woman child dogs sometimes that's not an exaggeration, is wearing a mask in all situations, biking, running, everywhere at all times. And there is a sense of, I don't want to say fear, because I don't think New Yorkers are fearful, but they have been heavily traumatized, which is what happens when 40,000 people die in one state. They are, they're not playing, as you'd say in New York. And when I came to London and saw, you know, people picnicking, people breathing on each other, I felt like the ancient mariner, you know, constantly horrified by something. It's a time lapse,

perhaps, but it was really disturbing. Yeah, it was a disturbing thing to see. What particularly horrified you here? It started very early on in March when anybody in America who had British relatives or European relatives was phoning home saying, please do this, please do this other thing, please wear a mask, please don't wash down your packages or whatever we thought at the time and the response you'd get from English friends was laughter you know that you were you'd gone mad or you were a hyper vigilant or you watched too much crazy news or so it was always like that and in each stage there was a time lapse and you had to learn not to

get angry with people because they were dealing with with the reality that was in front of them, the media that was in front of them. I think that the main lesson for me was what an incredible influence the media has in constructing reality, which I know is not news, but it was very intense to see that. One of the essays is called Contempt as a Virus, and Dominic cummings gets a mention why i was just interested in this um idea of the technocrat which i think is how he thinks of himself as he who knows best he who knows better um and this incredible imbalance of power and information. Because I think one of the things he's interested in is the surveillance of a population.

You know, he thinks he knows us very well. And he has really no interest in whether we know him or not. And when he made that long drive through his eyes, i was very struck by his subsequent press conference because what i saw in his face i'm sure i'm not the only one to notice it was was boredom and content that he was being asked questions by the people he i think in his mind the people are are what he manipulates what he controls and to be asked questions by them is tiresome and annoying and perhaps that's where you feel when you're an unelected official with that amount of power. So that interested me, that technocratic relationship that is so extraordinarily one-sided.

And you say very clearly in that essay that the virus creates inequalities. How would you hope the virus and the inequalities it creates might be resolved oh i don't think the virus creates inequalities i think it exposes them and what it exposes more than anything is the fact that some of these differences these inequalities we've allowed to exist between groups of people are existential. They are deadly. What I hope, I mean, it's not a very original hope, is that this experience will make people think again about what the commons might be and what it might involve. I mean, when people look back on, say, a book like White Teeth and think of it as whatever they think of it as, happy multicultural land, they're missing the main point of that book.

It is a description of a community in which there were certainly several differences between all kinds of people in the kind of schools I went to. But those differences were not existential. They were not deadly. So though there were recent immigrants in those schools, there were poor children, black children, middle class white children, Asian children, we could expect certain things to come to us more or less equally. Our health care, for example, our university access, there was a possibility that we could go to university for free, all of us. The differences between us, which were many, economic, personal, religious, were not existential.

We have now created a situation in this country and in America too where those differences are deadly and can be deadly, not only in the literal sense but in terms of your life expectancies, your life hopes, your professional future, where you live, what you earn. That's what I mean by existential. So for me, those kind of differences, they can't ever disappear, but they can be made more safe. They can be neutralized. We know how to do it. We've done it in this country before. And so I hope for a reemergence of that commons.

Sadie Smith, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning. And I will repeat the title of the book of essays, it's Intimations. Thank you very much indeed for being with us. Now, a new independent panel is being set up by the Health and Social Care Committee with the intention of giving ratings to the promises made by the government. The first area to be scrutinised is maternity care. I'm joined by Rosalind Bragg, the Director of Maternity Action, and by Dame Jane Dacre, Professor of Medical Education at University College London and the former President of the Royal College of Physicians. She is to lead the panel. Jane, why was this panel set up?

I think there's a recognition that government pledges often come thick and fast and are announced in a flurry of publicity. But there's much less focus on whether or not they achieve what they set out to achieve. line seeing and hearing a lot of things which I would have hoped would improve the care for patients. Eventually further down the line when you are at what we might call the NHS coalface you don't see them having as much of an impact as you would expect so to have a more formalized way of evaluating that I think is a really interesting thing to do. What sort of things were promised and then didn't come that really annoyed you? The increased number of doctors promised because of the difficulties in the medical workforce. 5,000 GPs, which increased to 6,000 GPs, and actually the number of increased doctors ended up being less. Now, there are mitigating reasons for that, but an evaluation of why that might

have happened, how that might have happened, and how to improve the achievement of that pledge would be really useful, I think, to all of us who are deliverers and receivers of health care. Rosalind, what do you expect to be examined by the panel in this first tranche, the maternity care? I think maternity safety is an issue that covers a lot of ground. One of the big questions for us is about women who are not attending for care. They're missing appointments or only going to hospital when they're in labour. We do know that these women are at significantly higher risk of maternal mortality. So it's a safety question, but it's also one which is not necessarily getting the airtime it needs.

So we're quite interested in the work that maternity services are doing to build trust and confidence in their local communities so that women are confident to engage with them, dealing with the impact of poverty on women's attendance. For example, what do you do if you don't have the bus fare to attend your appointment? What's being done in relation to charging vulnerable migrant women for NHS maternity care, destitute women getting bills for £7,000 or more for their carer not attending for care in many cases. And on top of that, of course, there's what's happening in the pandemic, as we know that there's been a lot of service changes to minimise the risk of infection. And virtual appointments

have been incredibly effective for a lot of women, but certainly not for all. And I think it's useful to look at the safety questions arising from that, particularly women who can't find a private place to take the call or don't have a phone, in fact. And cross-cutting questions, I think, would have to be the racial disparities issue. We've known for many years that black and minority ethnic women have significantly higher mortality rates than the white population. And while there has been work done, it's useful to ask precisely what that is and how effective that's been. And particularly, I think it's worth flagging the role which other government agencies can play in challenging the very poor health outcomes for these women. Jane, how will evaluation of patients' experience be researched?

How will you get the information from them? So we've developed quite a comprehensive process and patients are involved at every stage of the process. We're setting up a core panel and we're advertising for recruitment to that at the moment of three people, one of whom will be required to have experience of patient understanding and patient advocacy. And then when we look at specific areas, for example, like maternity, we will also be looking for a patient representative in that area.

And so the sorts of people would include patient advocates who, for example, have looked at maternity safety. Then the final and perhaps the most comprehensive part is that we'll put out a call for written submissions so that anybody can write in with their experience. And from those submissions, we'll have the opportunity to invite people to come and report their lived experience to us so that we're using a variety of different methods, but with patients at the heart of it and patients in each step of the way so that we make sure that we get a good understanding of what it's like for the patient or service user. I'm not entirely clear how you know someone sitting at home listening to this when you're up and running in in the autumn how will she know how to get to you?

So the Health and Social Care Committee will put out a call for written evidence. So people look out for that and then they can write in to the committee saying how far they think that this particular government pledge has been effective in their view. And those will be looked at by the patients and the other members of the committee. And some of those will be called in to give their opinion specifically. Rodeline, why is the participation of patients so important from your perspective? Women who've given birth in the NHS are in a very good position to identify gaps and problems in the services. They can speak to their experience and to the experiences of women in their networks. It's very easy for those delivering the service to assume that systems are working when they're not or when they're only working for some women. And so the contribution of women who've experienced the NHS, I think, are a very

important part of that picture. I do think one of the challenges of involving women in maternity services, and indeed in a panel of this kind, is that you need to make sure you get input from a wide variety of women. And that does require resources. Otherwise, you will tend to end up with quite a narrow group of women who are inputting. So you have your highest maternal mortality rates amongst groups who are least likely to engage in these processes. So asylum seeking women, migrant women, women dealing with poverty and homelessness, gypsy and traveller women. And I think one of the challenges for this panel is to make sure that those views are brought into this process as well. Ginger, just one last point briefly. We've read in The Guardian this morning that female doctors are saying they feel they're being eased out

because of attitudes to the menopause and that they're no longer capable of doing their jobs. How aware are you of that? Well, I'm very aware of the barriers to career progression and indeed pay progression for women doctors, because I've recently been the chair of the independent review into the gender pay gap in medicine. And what that has shown is that there are very clear structural inequalities that make medicine a more hostile environment for women than for men. Essentially, the NHS was set up in the 1950s with a 1950s male in mind as the doctor. And we've had fantastic developments in having more and more women come through medicine, but the structure that exists is less friendly to them than it is to the men. So there's a real problem with flexibility, for example, having rotors or having

your clinics at times when it's easy for you to do either for child care reasons or for elder care reasons or for health reasons. And this has been a real problem and is actually causing the women in medicine to thrive less well than the men. Now, women will soon be in the majority in medical professions. So these structural barriers do need to be sorted out. Well, Dame Jane Dacre will have to end there and Rosalind Bragg. Thank you both very much indeed. And if you have experience of maternity care, I'm sure most of you do, let us know about it.

You can send us an email or, of course, you can send a tweet. Now, still to come in today's programme, Sketches of China, two millennia of Chinese music to be released tomorrow by Xuefei Yang, one of the world's leading classical guitarists and the serial, the fourth episode of Bloody Ice Stetford. Now, earlier this week, we began a series of conversations about scars. On Tuesday, we heard from Jane, who'd contracted and survived a flesh-eating bug. If you missed her, you can find her on BBC Sounds. Today, Anna Miller has been talking to Emily, who introduces herself. My name's Emily. I'm 25 years old and I'm originally from Kenya and moved to London when I was 12 years old.

My scar's on my right hand, quite close to my wrist. It's a bit raised off my skin. And to the touch, it feels a bit hard, a bit lumpy in some areas, soft in areas. And in terms of its colour, it's a bit darker than my shade. It's got some pinks there, like light browns, and then it gets a bit darker. So yeah, there's my scar. It's basically three scars in one.

In my life, I've self-harmed three times on my arm, and it's all been on the same area. It's because I didn't want to get any more scars in different parts of my body actually over time it has changed shape and colour the last time I self-harmed was a year and a bit ago so before that it looked different and then before the second time I self-harmed it looked different as well. So it keeps changing? Yeah. What I noticed was when you talk about it and when we're looking down at your wrist you smile. That's really weird I didn't realise. Yes it represents a lot of pain but it also represents a lot of like overcoming because I think why I can smile now

is because I'm not in the place I used to be. I feel kind of like I'm taking care of it, if it makes sense. So when you look at your scar now, does it bring back memories? I think each day is different, to be honest. So today was the day I was really struggling with my mental health. I may not look at it in the same way I may not really even look at it but to be honest in normal day-to-day life because I've had this car since I was about 15 so it's kind of been nearly 10 years I think I've

kind of gotten used to seeing it on my arm to the point where I don't really notice it until someone asks a question or brings it up. The other women I'm speaking to, the scars happened to them and you're the only one I'm speaking to where the scar was inflicted by yourself? Yeah, it is a bit hard to think about, oh gosh, I did this to myself. Maybe I think I'm in therapy at the moment and self-harm is something that we talk about. It was inflicted, but I don't see it as I harmed myself. I see it as I had a lot of pain inside and I didn't know how to deal with it. And I think for me, especially coming from a background

with, like, physical punishment, the reason why I self-harmed the first time is because I did something really bad and then my parents didn't punish me, and I thought... Yeah, you said you'd stolen something? I shoplifted here and there, and, of course, the day I steal the most amount of things is the day I get caught and so my mum takes a call and she just breaks down crying and of course I've been crying

for like hours beforehand so on my way home I'm thinking I'm definitely gonna get sent back to Kenya I'm definitely gonna get sent back to Kenya because I had those stories of kids you know who moved here and then they started acting up and their parents were like no you're gonna go back home and also on top of that thinking I'm gonna get the beating of my life and then I get home just nothing in terms of like them shouting at me or them saying, how dare you do this and things like that. And I felt so guilty. And for me, it was the first time that I'd kind of screwed up in that way and not gone punished for it.

And I thought, I need to get punished for it, because that's what happens. In my head, doing something bad and getting beaten for it was like one plus one equals two. It was just like, that is what happens. Self-harm was not the next best thing, but it was that, OK, if I do this, then it would count as a punishment. And your family have never spoken about it? Yeah.

I mean, I don't think they ever saw it like that, though. I think they just saw me with a plaster and they just thought, OK. Or maybe not. I mean, I don't know what they thought. But it just was never brought up in that honest way. I don't really remember having it exposed. And I think, I feel like when I, maybe the first time I did have it exposed, it more felt like an elephant in a room kind of situation where everyone has noticed that there is something on my arm that was not there

before but no one brings it up I don't know why there's a part of me that feels like I think they know where it is maybe not using my words exactly but I think they know that this is something that was like self-inflicted because even just talking about mental health is not something that happens at home you know if we can't talk about mental health in a way that doesn't feel awkward and uncomfortable how are we gonna even start talking about self-harm what's it done to your self-esteem the first time I self-harmed you know I was a teenager and already not feeling that great about myself and my appearance. So this was essentially like one other thing.

And I remember being really angry at myself for doing it. But I feel like now having my scar has definitely played a part into my confidence now as an individual. And so how have you learnt to love it? Therapy. Therapy honestly was and is like a lifesaver. And I think she's also the first therapist that I really honestly discussed my scar. I remember seeing someone at a wedding and this person had marks all from above her wrist, all the way up her arms, both arms. She had this dress on.

And to be honest, my brain was shocked because I thought, wow. And then I thought, no, but wow, because you are saying I self-harmed, but I am not going to hide. You've got to the point where you can show it to the world. When I first got my scar, it was the first time, so it was at its smallest. And I went to so much effort to hide it, you know,

wearing like long sleeve, you know, skin tight tops, you know, in the summer and it's boiling and you're sweating and you're so uncomfortable. But also, you know, you want to look fashionable, you want to look cute. And the reason why I hid it is I thought everyone's gonna look at it people think they're entitled to touch and the intrusive questions if I had to be honest then I'd essentially be telling every stranger that asks me about my mental health and self-harm I just wouldn't want to do that I think especially with the stigma of self-harm, you tend to get this really shocked look. And you'd say they're, like, disgust

or it's someone feeling incredible pity for you. Both reactions I completely hate. So for me, it's just easier to say, yeah, I got burnt. And then they're like, oh, no, that's so sad. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then let's just move on. You work in an environment where it's very fashion conscious and then you've got this lovely green dress on

and the sleeves stop at the elbow. Your scar is there for people to see. So what was the shift from hiding yourself to now where it is what it is? I think it kind of coincided with me just getting tired of being so hard on myself and coming across you know like positive content online like you're worthy and you're loved and your mental health matters and I was like what really my needs for me mattered more than what other people might say so I feel like as I started becoming more honest knocking down that stigma from within then it allowed me to get to that point where I was like actually I'm gonna show my scar it's

gonna be out there and if people look at it and if people say something that's okay and also I'm not sweating as much as I used to before I remember the time I kind of went to like a family-ish social thing without my scar covered and I thought oh my god it's gonna be like the talk of the town no No one said anything. Everyone is essentially walking around worrying about themselves and how they look to others. So things that might look like a really big deal to me, they may not even bat an eye. Emily was talking to Enna Miller.

And if you need any help or advice about self-harming or scars, there's information on the Women's Hour website. Now, Shui-Fei Yang began playing the guitar when she was only seven. It was an unlikely instrument for a Chinese girl to learn in China less than a decade after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. And she's become one of the world's leading classical guitarists, and tomorrow will release an album called Sketches of China, drawing on two millennia of Chinese culture and music. Thank you. Shrevi, I know you've said the guitar discovered you when you were seven. How did it happen? Hello, Jenny.

Well, I felt it was a destiny because when I was a little girl, How did it happen? accordion was the most popular instrument at that time because there were lots of choirs and that they're using accordion to accompany like a cheaper and a portable piano. So when my parents talked to my music teacher in my school, she thought accordion was too heavy. So she put me into her guitar group and the children's singing with guitar to accompany. So I didn't even know what the guitar was.

It was a destiny. Beautiful one. And you took to it immediately, yes? Yes, and I liked the guitar immediately. I remembered that I opened the box and I plucked the string and I liked the sound immediately. And when you hold it, it felt like a good friend. What prompted you to make this album now? Because I know you've wanted to make it for some time. Yes, I have always wanted to play music from my country, especially after touring too many countries and playing lots of different music but at the time being I felt more eager to share the culture from my

country because I think that most of the talks about China are about either politics or economy so I'd like to introduce more conversation about our culture. After all, China has a 5,000 years culture. But I've spent 20 years journey to prepare for the repertoire and to explore the repertoire and transcribing and commissioning new pieces, so it's a substantial album. Now, there are stories of famous women going back, I think, to 190 AD. The extract we heard earlier was, pardon my pronunciation, I hope I get it right, Hu Jia.

What's the significance of that story? So Hu Jia is a reed flute, and this piece is based on a real person's story. It's a woman's story. Her name is Wen Ji Cai. She's from 2000 years ago. Actually there are lots of Chinese arts that featured her. So her father was a famous academic and a politician. That's why she was able to be very well educated. And then she was kidnapped by Asian nomads people. They were considered as a barbarian at that time. So during her 12 years of captivity she had two children, two children with

the nomad chief. And then a ransom was paid to release her so she could go home but then she had to leave her children behind so that was a tragic experience for her and the piece of music was supposedly written by her and the piece was about her traumatic experience so that's why it's a significant piece there's a track called sword dance that i'm told Western audiences are particularly enjoying. What's behind that story, the Sword Dance?

It's actually a modern piece but based on an ancient story from Tang Dynasty which is about 1300 years ago. Also about a lady artist she was a dancer and she was one of the very few dancers who made a fame both at the royal palace and in the society. So one of the most important poets called Du Fu

from Tang dynasty, he wrote a long poem to describe her dancing and the music Sword Dance written by a modern composer described what the poem wrote about this dancer. And I think this piece, during my performances, it received well, both by the Chinese and the Western audience. There's a duet with Sha Wan called Everlasting Longing, and that's about friends missing each other why was that important for you to record? Well Xia Yuan is one my roommate actually from the school years and she's really one of the top Gu Zheng players Gu Zheng is the Chinese traditional instrument

so I love Gu Zheng and I love her playing. So I always wanted to play something with her. And this piece is an ancient piece, very beautiful, very Chinese, very poetic. And we play this together and created this piece together. So I think it's another piece that's about old friends reflecting on the past. So it's perfect for us. Really like this piece. Now, I know anybody who is releasing a new album is hoping that there will be lots of tours and she can go around and play to real audiences. I know you had a series of tours planned. How has the pandemic affected your plans?

Well, greatly. I was supposed to have a big tour in china australia and the concert in the uk but now i'm actually off on sunday to china and hopefully the flight won't be cancelled and i have a full concert tour in august September so but in China nowadays the concerts are on hold with concert halls they only allow 30% seats and lots of musicians and concert halls they're doing live streaming so I'm hoping that this live streaming could be a future for us but there's still a lot to explore and how careful do you have to be when you're in China? I mean, is it wearing masks? Is it not being allowed to see friends?

How restrictive is it? I read a lot about this. In China, the rules are very strict. I think that once you are in China, it's pretty safe because you have to wear a mask. And I think in some cities cities it's almost like normal. You can go out to eat, you can go to cinemas. But what I'm worried about is on the plane, the plane journey, even if you have to wear a mask,

but there are lots of people. And then the thing I worry about is the 14 days quarantine. I think everybody would have to be quarantined 14 days in a hotel and then you're free, you can go anywhere. But after that, I feel it's pretty safe to move around and to go out

and to meet people. Well, Shwetha, the very best of luck on the flight and when you get there. And thank you so much for being with us this morning. Do join Jane tomorrow when she'll be talking to Victoria Silias. You may remember she made headlines in 2015

when it emerged that her husband had tried to kill her by tampering with her parachute before she took a 4,000-foot jump, which he'd organised as a present for her. Against all the odds, she survived, and he was sentenced to 18 years on two counts of attempted murder. Well, she's now written a book, I Survived, and she'll tell Jane all about it. And the next in the How To Summer Series,

practical advice for some of life's biggest challenges, whether it's racism, sexism, homophobia, or another form of discrimination, what's the best way to be a good ally? Join Jane, if you can, two minutes past 10 tomorrow from me for today. Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.