Life and Death in Shanghai

In elegant prose, Nien Cheng, a Shell Oil Company in 1966, recounts her life in Shanghai in 1966, when Chairman Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Mao’s Red Guards ransacked Cheng and her husband’s bourgeois home and then delivered her to No. 1 Detention House in Shanghai where she was held in solitary confinement of 7 years until her rehabilitation and release after several struggle trials.

Her work is prescient as the United States in under attack by a radical woke ideology. Many Americans have been cancelled or have been made to attend struggle sessions.  

Nein Chen is… show more.

I read this book when it was originally published in 1988, and I can still recall how I was blown away by the amazing first-hand account of a brave woman who became a target of China's cultural revolution. Nien Cheng, a fluent English speaker who worked for Shell in Shanghai under Mao, was placed under house arrest by Red Guards in 1966 before she was sent to prison. Despite torture, she refused to confess to being a British spy or to be “re-educated”. When she was released, she was told that her daughter had committed suicide. In fact, Meiping had… show more.

A good novel or memoir transports you through time and space into another world. Cheng’s memoir has such a magic quality. A once ‘elite’ member, she was however seen as an enemy in the Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and was subjected to torture and years of solitary detention. The first-person narration, beautifully written, takes you to Shanghai in the late 60s and shows you a world ruled by insanity, injustice, and cruelty. But it’s not all darkness. Cheng’s strength and resilience, and the help and care people offered to each other in spite of great hardships are all inspiring. And you… show more.