Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng

Cheng was rehabilitated after the Gang of Four (including Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong's wife) were arrested, and she used the opportunity to leave for the United States, as she was still a constant target of surveillance by those who wished her ill. Her daughter Meiping Cheng, a prominent Shanghai film actress, was murdered by Maoists after the young woman refused to denounce her mother. Her book documents her amazing courage and fortitude that enabled her to survive her imprisonment.Ĭheng endured six-and-a-half years of squalid and inhumane conditions in prison, all the while refusing to give any false confession. Maoist revolutionaries used this fact to claim that Cheng was a British spy in order to strike at Communist Party moderates for allowing the firm to operate in China after 1949. Cheng became a target of attack by Red Guards due to her management of a foreign firm in Shanghai, Shell.

Her daughter Meiping Cheng, a prominent Shanghai film actress, was murdered by Maoist Nien Cheng is a Chinese American author who recounted her harrowing experiences of the Cultural Revolution in her memoir Life and Death in Shanghai.

Cheng endured six-and-a-half years of squalid and inhumane conditions in prison, all the while refusing to give any false confession. Her book documents her amazing courage and fortitude that enabled her to survive her imprisonment. Nien Cheng is a Chinese American author who recounted her harrowing experiences of the Cultural Revolution in her memoir Life and Death in Shanghai.

Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng