Cheng Nien (鄭念), whose memoir Life and Death in Shanghai offered a harrowing account of the Cultural Revolution in China and her years of imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Red Guards, died on Nov. 2 at her home in Washington. She was 94.
The cause was cardiovascular and renal disease, said Catherine Mack, the executor of her estate.
As the widow of a diplomat and businessman and an adviser to a foreign oil company, Cheng found herself in a politically dangerous position as the Cultural Revolution gathered strength in the 1960s. In 1966, she was arrested by Red Guards and charged with espionage.
She spent the next six-and-a-half years in solitary confinement at the No. 1 Detention House in Shanghai, harshly interrogated and beaten by her jailers, to whom she responded with defiance and mockery.
“I grew up with a strong sense of loyalty and duty to my country,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1987. “I felt humiliated that they should accuse me, who loved my country, of being a spy. I could not accept it, I had to fight. In prison, sometimes I would get so mad — I was rarely depressed — by and large my predominant emotion was anger.”
In 1973 she was told that the authorities had agreed to release her in recognition of an “improvement in her way of thinking and an attitude of repentance.”
She refused to leave and vowed to stay in prison until the government declared her innocent and issued an apology in the press.
Astonished prison officials pushed her out the door, grumbling that “in all the years of the detention house, we have never had a prisoner like you, so truculent and argumentative.”
Once outside, she learned that her only child was dead. The official explanation was suicide, but Cheng learned that her daughter had been murdered by the Red Guards for refusing to denounce her mother as a class enemy.
In 1987, after emigrating to Canada and then the US, Cheng published her memoir, which began with the sentence, “The past is forever with me, and I remember it all.”
The book won critical acclaim and became a bestseller.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese