Description

pp. xxv, (1), 405, b/w illustrations, “This is the compelling, strikingly candid and at times excruciatingly painful personal story of a woman who, while teaching modern Chinese literature at Beida (Beijing University), was denounced as a “rightist” in 1957. She was torn from her children and husband and sent to a rural peasant commune for “rectification.” Thus Yue Daiyun begins her odyssey, here set down in evocative English by Wakeman, who teaches English at Beida. Born in 1931, Yue Daiyun grew up in an academic community; she despised Chiang and the Nationalists and considered herself a revolutionary and a Maoist, believing that the Revolution would evolve along democratic lines. As she recounts the power struggle raging among Mao, Lin Biao and other party leadersa struggle marked by frequent “campaigns” and changes of “party line” culminating in the reign of terror called the Cultural Revolutionreaders are given the most informative views of peasant life and of the lot of Chinese intellectuals during the storm of Mao’s last years that have yet been published in this country.”