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Life and Death in Shanghai, by Nien Cheng
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A first-hand account of China's cultural revolution.
A first-hand account of China's cultural revolution. Nien Cheng, an anglophile and fluent English-speaker who worked for Shell in Shanghai under Mao, was put under house arrest by Red Guards in 1966 and subsequently jailed. All attempts to make her confess to the charges of being a British spy failed; all efforts to indoctrinate her were met by a steadfast and fearless refusal to accept the terms offered by her interrogators. When she was released from prison she was told that her daughter had committed suicide. In fact Meiping had been beaten to death by Maoist revolutionaries.
- Sales Rank: #140469 in eBooks
- Published on: 2010-08-19
- Released on: 2010-08-19
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
This gripping account of a woman caught up in the maelstrom of China's Cultural Revolution begins quietly. In 1966, only the merest rumblings of political upheaval disturbed the gracious life of the author, widow of the manager of Shell Petroleum in China. As the rumblings fast became a cataclysm, Cheng found herself a target of the revolution: Red Guards looted her home, literally grinding underfoot her antique porcelain and jade treasures; and she was summarily imprisoned, falsely accused of espionage. Despite harsh privationeven tortureshe refused to confess and was kept in solitary confinement for over six years, suffering deteriorating health and mounting anxiety about the fate of her only child, Meiping. When the political climate softened, and she was released, Cheng learned that her fears were justified: Meiping had been beaten to death when she refused to denounce her mother. The candor and intimacy of this affecting memoir make it addictive reading. Its intelligence, passion and insight assure its place among the distinguished voices of our age proclaiming the ascendancy of the human spirit over tyranny. Cheng is now a U.S. resident. BOMC main selection; author tour.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Cheng's widely acclaimed book recounts in compelling specifics her persecution and imprisonment at the hands of Mao Zedong's "Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976). Inquisitors accused her of being a "spy" and "imperialist," but during the harrowing years of solitary confinement she never gave in, never confessed a lie. We read this, not so much for historical analysis, but, like the literature of the Gulag in Russia, for an example of a humane spirit telling terrible truths honestly, without bitterness or cynicism. Highly recommended. BOMC main selection. Charles W. Hayford, History Dept., Northwestern Univ., Evanston, Ill.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
154 of 160 people found the following review helpful.
Superbly written, interesting and objective.
By Maginot
I never thought that I could love a true account of tragedy, suffering, and grave injustice, but I have to admit that I love "Life and Death in Shanghai". I don't mean that I read this book for entertainment or recommend it to everybody. Like some of the works of Solzhenitsyn or Elie Weisel, the subject of Nien Cheng's book is real, painful, and sometimes very difficult to read. Yet I find myself constantly rereading "Life and Death in Shanghai" and it is one of the few books I refuse to part with. How can this be?
Nien Cheng writes of personal loss, suffering, and injustice with unusually lucid and mature prose. She is impressive as story teller, an historian, but most of all as a writer. One of the most effective qualities of Nien Cheng's writing is the remarkable restraint she employs when describing unfair and frankly inhumane actions perpetrated against her and her family. She describes her arrest, captivity, and daily efforts to challenge her tormentors with cool objectivity.
One of the most impressive parts of the book is the account of how Nien Cheng studied Chairman Mao's collected works in prison. Despite the fact that Mao's policies had personally harmed her and were tearing China apart, she studied his works in earnest and evaluated them objectively. She concluded that Mao was a brilliant guerrilla warfare strategist but that he was only capable of destruction, not creativity.
Nien Cheng enhances her personal narrative by describing relevant Chinese historical events. As a result, the reader acquires a sense of context and is better able to understand why certain things happen to her. For example, Nien Cheng is repeatedly persecuted for her alleged support of Liu Xiaoqi. During one of her interrogations she is bold enough to declare that his policies, as elucidated by her jailers, sound perfectly sensible. Then after years in captivity, she is suddenly treated with more kindness and praised for her positive remarks about Liu Xiaoqi. Nien Cheng explains to the reader that during this time, political tidings had turned against the radical Gang of Four and that moderate factions in the Chinese Communist Party had rehabilitated Liu Xiaoqi.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in modern Chinese history, in survival and triumph, or to anyone who enjoys encountering the English language at its best. My deep respect and appreciation go out to Nien Cheng.
60 of 60 people found the following review helpful.
The Very Best Memoir of the Cultural Revolution
By Renee Thorpe
There is now an almost overwhelming amount of personal accounts of life during Mao's Cultural Revolution. The tales of atrocities and abuses are many, but this is a particularly extraordinary memoir, in my opinion the best of the lot.
Nien Cheng suffered enormously, and her book recounts her persecution in amazing detail. She had more than 6 years to recall every degrading and unjust incident, and it is remarkably all here. Yet it is never for a moment boring or tedious. She writes beautifully and appreciatively of the tasty snack her cook gave her the day she went to be screamed at by an auditorium full of Red Guards. It is this extraordinary attention to simple goodness and the author's triumphant but humble survival that sets this book apart.
Someone said to me, "oh, I could never buy that book. I couldn't stand the pain." My friend was mistaken. Nien Cheng's book is about pain, but not defeat. To be sure, it is about the hellish consequences of a society gone mad, but her own clear conscience reigns supreme.
It is a quite beautiful story of the triumph of the human spirit. Outstanding.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Beautifully written account of what really happened.
By Kyi May Kaung
Beautifully written account of what really happened.
Nien Cheng arrived in the USA about the same time I did, though she was about the age of my mother.
I came from Burma and was studying, in secret, why socialist or communist systems and central planning fail. Immediately after 1988, when the Burmese embassy sent agents to check on what my colleague Yasmin (now deceased) and I were studying, I said to the rather stupid man, "development economics." And I mentioned names he was likely to know already.
In those first years in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, I was too busy with course work-related reading to do much "outside reading."
But I do remember distinctly reading abridged versions of Nien Cheng's book and Dr. Li Zisui's Life of Chairman Mao as excerpts in Time Magazine.
However, as excerpts they were much less satisfying than the full length books.
--
When I first got to Washington D.C. to work at a radio station broadcasting to Burma, I walked to Politics and Prose Bookstore and sat at one of the tables downstairs.
It turned out the group at the next table was discussing Life and Death in Shanghai.
My eavesdropping became too obvious, and the women invited me over.
It was a women's bio group.
A few weeks later they invited Nien Cheng to P's house, and I got to meet her!
I distinctly remember what she said, and I wrote a short piece for the radio newsletter.
She told us the exact amount of money she had "in blue chip stocks" when she arrived, and how she had no idea of how she would get any more.
She re-wrote her manuscript 4 times.
She said, "There were so many interrogations," (so she had to combine some).
I asked if she would go back to China.
She said, "No. Maybe if my daughter had lived--"
The regime returned her daughter's clothes, including a barely worn padded jacket.
--
This book like Dr Li's illustrates so well the violent zig-zagging of Chinese policy, really one man, Mao's whims, and how everyone is warped and suffers as a result.
As I am from Burma, which more or less aped Chinese and Soviet economic policies, it is very easy for me to relate to Nien Cheng's experiences.
I think partly the writing is so economical and precise because she is a trained economist, a graduate of LSE or the London School of Economics.
The other is because she is just a very good writer, able to look at herself and her past objectively and write it as it was.
Brilliant.
When I told my economist mentor from Burma, now at Columbia Univ., in about 2001 that I had met Nien Cheng, he asked, "Is she as impressive as people say?"
"Oh, definitely."
I am even more impressed at how she managed her life, after reading Life and Death in Shanghai, unabridged.
I was sad to learn she had passed away, but even when we met she said calmly, "If my (arthritis) gets worse, I will just go to managed care,"
and "I am leaving everything to Sibley Hospital."
For me, Nien Cheng is a great role model.
To survive Maoist China and prison, to leave China and start again at age 70+, to write one book which was a best seller, to be able to live a gracious, generous and good life, all this is admirable.
She died in 2009 of renal failure at her home in D.C., Wikipedia says.
What a great lady and a great life.
Kyi May Kaung--
9-6-2016
Kyi May Kaung--9-6-2016
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