Here came this book from one of my friends and I thought, o.k, let's read another book written by a woman who publishes her own story (I just had finished reading THE ROAD OF LOST INNOCENCE BY SOMALY MAN) and expected something similar. But here it was, another book that I couldn't put down, and it is quite an amazing story. I started reading because it dealt with the Cultural Revolution in China in 1966 and the author, Nien Cheng, was a woman whose husband had been working for Shell. When he died she served as an assistant to the new Gen. Manager until Shell stopped operating in China. She had money, education, traveled around and had one daughter and was very comfortable. Anyway, one day her house was ransacked by the Red Guard and she ends up in solitary confinement for 6 1/2 year. All her property, her money, her collections are confiscated and disappear in the hands of the very very young wild Red Guard. Her crime was to be a spy. She refuses to feel guilty and to confess, she constantly argues with her interrogators, she gets sick, sent back to her cell, gets sick again, continues to argue, gets tormented and accused again, under the worst conditions. But she resists and does not give in in spite of all of this. And so she lives, or barely lives, for 6 1/2 years in her solitary cell. It's extraordinary. The country is torn apart by the savage fight of power Mao Tse-tung launched trying to topple party moderates, there is his wife, the Gang of Four. Other prisoners and friends break down and confess things they did not do. She finally gets released, not rehabilitated, in 1972. This ends Part I. The second part shows the new China where property belongs to everybody, where people have no pride, food is scarce, black markets exists — it's extremely poor and distressing to live there. Her daughter, an actress, died in the meantime, apparently having committed suicide, which is not so, she was murdered. But Nien Cheng goes on living, surviving again and again. One asks why she can do it and others can't! Somehow she is able to put her hands on her money in Switzerland, is able to leave China finally and move to Canada and lives now in Washington DC. She is highly intelligent and unable to give up. Vow. As the guards say when she gets released: We never had anybody like you.
Somehow this story was not only good to learn more about conditions in China during the Cultural Revolution, but more than anything it is just astounding to meet this woman's incredible courage. I looked at her photo on the cover where she has such a friendly smile wearing this very elegant gray dress and it shows absolutely no relation to the terrible conditions she endured during that time. The picture doesn't give a clue about her. Strange.
I liked it a lot.
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