![]() ![]() But equally illuminating are the book’s deeply empathetic portraits of more ordinary people, from minor members of Beijing’s literary world to villagers Chen befriended after she was exiled to the countryside. Chen moved in elite circles, and some specialists will be most fascinated by vignettes featuring Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and other notable figures. Mao’s disastrous Great Leap Forward precipitated mass starvation, and several years later, the Cultural Revolution caused further suffering, with, for instance, teachers beaten to death and prominent writers and artists driven to commit suicide after facing intense ritual denunciations. By contrast, the now 90-year-old Chen depicts a tumultuous time, when she and many other intellectuals faced incredibly difficult choices-to stay or leave, to speak out or remain silent-as the Chinese leader Mao Zedong encouraged the radical social and political transformation of the country. ![]() Authorities have blandly recast the period as part of a decade of “arduous exploration and development achievement,” suppressing the story of its upheaval and brutality. In this beautifully crafted memoir, Chen, who lived in China during the first years of Communist Party rule, before immigrating to Hong Kong in the 1970s, seeks to counteract the “Orwellian rewriting” of the Cultural Revolution underway in Beijing. ![]()
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