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.
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS