Tales of Hulan River is Xiao Hong's famous wryly humorous and bleakly poignant account of her home village and the always difficult, sometimes brief lives of its citizens. These reminiscences deftly convey the deep and pervasive misogyny of Chinese society at the time. The novel presents the hell of village life, lavishing most of its attention upon the barbaric treatment of the twelve-year-old child bride married to the youngest son of a rich local family: the girl is lashed by her in-laws, her feet branded with a flatiron, she's dipped in vats of scalding water, and she eventually dies. Xiao Hong makes no comment, and she doesn't flinch at such unimaginable cruelty and violence; she makes it seem what it is to the villagers—part of everyday life.