“I supposed the Red Guards had enjoyed themselves. Is it not true that we all possess some destructive tendencies in our nature? The veneer of civilization is very thin. Underneath lurks the animal in each of us. If I were young and had had a working class background, if I had been brought up to worship Mao and taught to believe him infalliable, would I not have behaved exactly as the Red Guards had done?”― Nien Cheng, Life and Death in Shanghai
This memoir of Nien Cheng describes her experience during the Cultural Revolution in China. She was a fluent English speaker and worked for the Shell Company in Shanghai. In 1966, Red Guards looted her home, placed her under house arrest, and later placed her in jail. While in prison, guards tried to get Cheng to confess to being a spy for “the imperialists” since she worked for a western company. She refused and was tortured as a result. She spent six years in prison and remained under surveillance for the next seven years until she was able to escape China. This is not an easy read as Nien Cheng goes into great detail about her persecution, imprisonment, and torture. She is a remarkable woman and her story is an important one.
I read this book for the first time close to thirty years ago. I knew about the Cultural Revolution but didn’t know a lot of the details. This book opened my eyes to the horror of that time and I was shocked at how many people embraced the violence and destruction Mao espoused. It is a cautionary tale for all societies.
Content Advisory: Violence, torture