A vivid and meticulous account of Cultural Revolution

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	• Life and Death in Shanghai Nien Cheng Penguin, 1988 - 547 pages average customer review:based on 123 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A vivid and meticulous account of Cultural Revolution

I am a Chinese living in Hong Kong and I have relatives who have endured through the Cultural Revolution. The events that they told me were in a very great extent similar to those described by Cheng. As a result I think she did not exaggerate nor making up any stories of her own. Moreover, remember that what Cheng has gone through is just very "typical" among the tens of thousands of so-called "capitalists" during that period. Her detailed and sober description of what she had been experienced is breathtaking. You could not resist to read until the last page. There is just one thing I couldn't understand: How can the people of a whole country turn mad just overnight? After reading the last page, I took a deep breath and hope that after so many years and also after the reform, China will never experience such a turmoil again.

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A very determined Chinese lady

I first travelled to Shanghai in 1984. Some time after returning to Canada, I was in a bookstore and seeing this book, I found its title intriguing, bought it and read it. Well, I just re-read it and it's as striking the second time around. One question pre-occupied me: How did this woman have the courage to stand up to all that madness?

The book is in the first person and one suspects that Nien Cheng had a precise way of putting flowers in a vase in her receiving room. Was she a snob? Was she an egotist? Before her arrest, she lived well and she seemed perfectly comfortable supervising a household of servants. Later, she apparently lived well because of foreign bank accounts. So, snob? She was at pains to claim otherwise, preferring people of whatever background as long as they were honest. Egotist? Perhaps. She was certain of her own rightness.

All "progressive" people in North America should read this book. The Revolutionary Guards who imprisoned and interrogated Nien Cheng viewed her as "rich" and wanted to "reform" her. Truly progressive or otherwise, the book's value is greater than its indictment of the mindset underneath the Cultural Revolution. At any moment, her tormentors could have simply thrown her out of a window and claimed that she had commit suicide. I don't know how she managed to stand up to them but I suspect that she knew that she was in her country, amongst her people, and what was happening was wrong. Her courage was an affair of conviction, guile and genuine solidarity. Highly recommended.

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My favourites

I read this books a many times for I love it so much. Although the author I never heard of, I am glad I bought this book.
A must read because of her survival skills, her courage, her determination and the inspiration.

When table manners can be held against you

I read this book many years ago and what remains after all these years is that the author was advised by her jailers that she was prolonging her prison term because she maintained her table manners whilst in prison - an indication that she wasn't down to earth. Growing up, I had heard stories about how jealous and spiteful neighbors took the opportunity to avenge their insecurities on people who made them feel guilty about themselves and I witnessed people with criminal agendas accusing others of thinking they were better than others because they knew that was an effective trigger to invite the worst in human nature from third parties. This is a bad sign anywhere and everywhere in the world when good behavior is punished instead of promoted and emulated. I think that sometimes stress is evident in the way someone chomps aggressively when otherwise they seem mild and "modest." Now would anyone be angry at seeing a calmer chewer because of the evil thought/attitude crime of a secret sense of superiority or are they upset at the flash of insight of what is not available to them and knowing the cause of the loss. I think that China remains a country whose people are in an enormous amount of pain and are genuinely in desperate straits not just poverty-wise but emotionally too and it does not help that the Mainlanders are perceived as handling those years of deprivation and have emerged unscathed. That's not possible. My last Chinese teacher told me that every single adult and child including himself suffers from depression and each individual needs a team of therapists. That's not going to happen.

Nien Cheng is one of the Chinese before this current majority overwhelms and corrects our perception of what are "real Chinese" as the Mainlanders are wont to declare themselves. I'm not saying that Mainlanders are bad or dirty, many have a right to feel inferior to no one. But it's ok to say that some things are not ok otherwise the behavior stemming from being troubled and damaged and lack of reflection about what was stolen from them by fellow Chinese as well as by foreigners is going to be perpetuated and it's going to cost everyone not just Mainlanders. I understand the point of pride of not discussing the damage done and just getting on and managing as well as one can but for Chinese to indulge their porcelain tastes and not have this happen again or to make it less likely to reoccur and to combat wilful condescending misinterpretation requires some grasp of the gutter-level aspects of history.

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A Terrific Story well written

This book is a great read and provides good insight into the insanity that gripped China during the Moa Se Tung era. Highly recommend it.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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