Although I've rated it at 4 stars, I cannot recommend it as an enjoyable or easy read. It's a long book that might have been shortened up by a third to improve focus and readability. The autobiography goes into great detail about her persecution, imprisonment and torture, so much so that the author had to put the manuscript away many times as she wrote it because the memories were so troubling.Life and Death in Shanghai is Nien Cheng's memoir of her harrowing and tragic life under Communist rule in China. She never returned, first emigrating to Canada, and later to Washington, D.C., where she wrote the autobiography. She lived in China until 1980, when the political climate warmed enough for her to apply for a visa to the United States to visit family. Cheng conducted a discreet investigation and found that this scenario was impossible.Īfter being relocated from her spacious home to a mere two bedrooms on the second floor of a two-story building, Cheng continued her life under constant surveillance, including spying by the family on the first floor. When released from jail in 1973, Cheng found that her daughter Meiping, who was studying to become a film actress, had been murdered by the Red Guards, although the official position was that she had committed suicide. However, Cheng resisted leaving prison without receiving acknowledgment from her captors that she had been unjustly imprisoned. She was eventually paroled under the pretense that her attitude had shown improvement. Cheng refused to provide a false confession, and was tortured as a result. During her imprisonment, she was pressured to make a false confession that she was a spy for 'the imperialists' because for many years after the death of her husband she had continued to work as a senior partner for Shell in Shanghai. The book tells the story of Cheng's arrest during the first days of the Cultural Revolution, her imprisonment, release, persecution, efforts to leave China, and early life in exile.Ĭheng was arrested in late 1966 after Red Guards looted her home. Life and Death in Shanghai is an autobiography published in November 1987 by Nien Cheng from exile in the United States which details Cheng's six-year imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution.

Life and death in shanghai