Term Paper on Life and Death in Shanghai

 

Introduction
Beijing is the place of birth of Nien Cheng and January 28, 1915 is her date of birth. She received her advanced education at Yenching University in Beijing and afterwards went to London where she got admission in London School of Economics. She married to Dr. K'ang Chi Cheng, who was then a government official and a diplomat of the then Nationalist Government of China. They had one daughter who was born in Canberra, Australia. In the year 1949 when Chinese Communist Party took over China, Dr. Cheng was removed from his diplomatic tasks and was assigned the responsibilities of the General Manager of Shell International Petroleum Company's Shanghai Office. In the mean while Mr.Cheng got seriously sick and he passed away of cancer in 1957. The hard time for Nien was on its way and she had to join the Shell Office as Advisor to Management. [Nien Cheng]

Mao Ze-dong in the mean while launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966. During this uprising the leading Chinese characters in almost every foreign firms and banks were labeled as being clandestine agents for the imperialist. During the same period Nien Cheng was also arrested on the same charges. Nien Chen was treated very roughly and the Red Guards looted and rummaged through her home. Nien Cheng after her arrest was deprived of her young daughter and taken to the No. 1 Detention House for political prisoners where she was impounded in solitary confinement for 6 1/2 years. In the year 1973 when Nien Cheng got released from solitary prison, was told that her daughter had committed suicide. Subsequent to the death of Mao Ze-dong’s in 1976, the political state of affairs in China changed. [Nien Cheng] After two years in 1978, Nien Cheng was rehabilitated and was declared innocent of any transgression. Nien Cheng also came to know that her daughter did not commit suicide but in fact was beaten to death by the Red Guards and Revolutionaries because she had declined to criticize and condemn her mother as an undercover agent. Several years later, the political situation in China shifted and Ms. Cheng was released from prison. Despite all the hardships she had been through, her health quickly improved. Her friends commented that she looked much younger than her actual age. The life in China for her became more tough and hard and it was 1980 when Nien Cheng decided to leave China for Canada where she lived in Ottawa from 1981 to 1983. Nien Cheng eventually moved to the United States as an immigrant in 1983. On 1988 - August 16th, 1988 when Nien Cheng became a citizen of the United States, she said, "This is the proudest day of my life."[Nien Cheng]

Literature Review
 

The book
When the red army arrested Nien Cheng, she was placed in one of the worst conditions she ever came across in her life. All that she experienced in the prison, she wrote it all in her book “Life and Death in Shanghai”. Nien Cheng in this book portrays her days in China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. As a result of her husband’s association with a foreign firm, she was put through the agony of being interrogated. Not only she was manhandled, mistreated and her home but all her possessions were also confiscated by the Red Guard and her daughter tortured. At this stage Nien Cheng was alone by herself and was in her fifties when all this took place.

 

“Life and Death in Shanghai” was published in England in 1986, which became the bestseller. Translations were subsequently very quickly followed and were published in 16 languages. Book being a thrilling and true account of the tyranny was liked in several countries, in particular Japan. Chinese translations were also published in Taiwan as well as on the Mainland where it received wide publicity and was widely read until the Tiananmen Massacres took place in June 1989. Grove Press published “Life and Death in Shanghai” in New York in 1987. The book stayed on the New York Times bestseller's list for 13 weeks. The portions of the book were quote in the Times magazine, the Reader's Digest Chinese language edition as well as its International Edition. The Book-of-the-Month Club selected Life and Death in Shanghai as its July 1987 main selection. Many newspapers all over the U.S. selected Life and Death in Shanghai as one of the best books for 1987. The book also received the Christopher Award.
 

The Nien’s Account
Nien has very effectively and successfully highlighted the worst state of political victimization in China. In August 1966 the brutal of Red Guards search of the home of Nien Cheng was surely due to her background, which made her an evident objective for the extremist militants of the Cultural Revolution. Being recipient of the high standard education in London, the widow of an influential bureaucrat of Chiang Kai-Shek's regime, and an member of staff of Shell Oil, Nien Cheng have the benefit of enjoying the comfort that very few of her fellow citizen could afford. When she rejected to admit that any act of her or her husband made her an enemy of the state, she was subjected to more tough restrictions and was placed in solitary confinement, where she would remain for an unspecified time limit. The horrible story of Nien Cheng in form Life and Death in Shanghai is the dominant narrative of Nien Cheng's captivity, of the dispossession she underwent, of her valiant struggle, and of her pursuit for righteousness when she was freed. It is the chronicle of a country made in to pieces by the fight for power Mao Tse-tung initiated in his campaign to overthrow party modest. This is a perceptive, exceptional private explanation of a terrifying episode in history of china. Life and Death in Shanghai is also an astound representation of one woman's audacity before the brutal enemy. Nien Cheng's widely commended story is the forceful details of the harassment and caging at the hands of opponents. The story of Nien is not much of the historical analysis, but is also the literature containing a humane spirit telling terrible truths honestly, without resentment or disparagement. [Nien Cheng]

The fascinating explanation of a woman bogged down in the China's Cultural upheaval commences inaudibly. Only the simple reverberating of political disorder had distressed the affable life of the widow. As the moments passed the fast became the catastrophe and Cheng found herself a target of the revolution. Her antique porcelain and emerald treasures were factually crushed underfoot. The truthfulness and confidence of this heartwarming memoir makes it enthusiast reading. Its astuteness, excitement and insight promise its position along with the illustrious influences declaring the dominance of the human character over oppression. [Robert Rick]. The greatest interest of her chronicle lies in the account of her struggle against the psychological and physical pressures through which she was being made to pass. It was for sure that any ordinary person with weak power of resistance would have broken very quickly in the hands of the fanatics. Her heroic resistance concludes in a splendid moment when, with her hands mutilated and disfigured, her gums infected, bleeding continually from assumed cervical cancer, she is informed that, as a result of 'proletarian magnanimity,' she is liberated and can leave and resume her sporadic life. Nien in 'Life and Death in Shanghai’ has beautifully brought out the absorbing story of creativity the valor and complacency. [Barnes and Noble]

No previous knowledge of Communist China is necessary, as the author repeatedly stops her story and briefs the reader with the essential past and political information to understand her story. Life and Death in Shanghai is precious for its account of Maoist China at the height of its zeal. Cheng gives both a personal and historical account of the Red Guards and their activities, painting a comprehensible picture of how they worked as a whole and of a number of typical individual Guard personalities. She talks about the measures of Party officials, fight back meetings, and her imprisonment, and in doing so both tells her story and gives the reader a sense of the mechanism of working by China during the Cultural Revolution. The readers who look for a fascinating, emotional story will not find it in this book but those probing for an understanding of Maoist China will methodically take pleasure in reading this book. Life and Death in Shanghai merges the record of China’s Cultural Revolution, initiated by trickery group struggles inside the Chinese Communist Party, against the uphill struggle of one female to endure regardless of assault on her physical and mental health. The story of Cheng’s existence is one of the human fortitude prevailing over social state of affairs. When the armed forces of Communism, Nationalism, and anti-imperialism flounced China and ended in the Communist Revolution of 1949, persons participating became sheer medium for the expansion of record but Nien Cheng continue to exist and, in a sense has won her struggle.

 

After the insurrection in China in 1949, the Communist Party of China felt an advantage in doing trade with Shell Oil and permitted Shell Oil to continue an office in Shanghai. Afterward one of the revolution official on behalf of the Communist Party called on Nien Cheng, introducing himself by spit out on her carpet to demonstrate his disdain. A good party man such as he felt thankful to express his recently obtained dominance to an important person of prosperity and in 1966 China had a lot of such activists mostly young people. They made themselves terrible by the intensity of their sincerity. Nien Cheng put in the picture the story of her end at the hands of Mao's Red Guards, starting in 1966. The Red Guards were human characters in action; taking severe action to the situations arising out of the social revolution and empowerment by a man they considered a champion, a man of valor and altruism, Mao Zedung.
 

The Negative Side Of The Nien’s Story
Where the book presents excellent account of courage it does carry some weak aspects as well. The book seems to be a complex book, as conspicuous in its blind spots as in its insight. The large part of the book deals with the state of affairs of Nien Cheng's faced during imprisonment and the way she dealt with her opponents in jail. Her book however certainly does not assist to understand why the Cultural Revolution took place, or why it finished. It tells, as an alternative, how it happened and how one individual survived it. From such stories and a mounting number of books like the people will start to be aware of the rebellion. In spite of the fact that the author tells in her book about Red Guards raiding her house and her imprisonment and torture, the book is not emotional at all. Despite it being in the first person, the author writes neutrally and in a few words. Her thoughts are clear to the reader, but the writing style remains quiet and her emotions are hardly ever given away. This, in a way, parallels her approach in the story. She made a largely successful effort to remain calm and collected throughout the events in her life.

Nien Cheng confines a culture through the eyes of an individual, an outlook that is improved by Cheng’s dispassionate but valuable writing technique. The story makes every one make out and understand the influence of Maoism that is very clear and not seriously altered by special ideological prejudices. The recollections of events are clear in their meaning for the judgment to be made. Life and Death in Shanghai may be restricted in its span when but it is an important constituent of any bigger prospectus. One must feel a feature about the events found in the book, that it was written in the viewpoint of a rich lady who is in favor of entrepreneur style of society. Her efforts are just that of a wealthy woman having a touch of an uncomfortable life of the poor. The intent of the Red Guards and the whole Cultural Revolution was by no means about racial distillation, but of cutting down overseas and industrial powers that had shaped large holes among the rich and the poor. The struggles of the wealthy, people can some time lead away from the true narratives of history because of the money involved in narrating the stories.

Data Analysis
Life and Death in Shanghai touched every reader so deeply, with its tale of the Cultural Revolution that took six years of Nien Cheng's freedom and her only child whom she will never forget. Nien Cheng primarily in her account of the captivity has highlighted the negative role played by the Red Guards who were the self declared belligerent groups of high school and university students who were tremendously faithful to Chinese leader Mao Zedong throughout the early phases of the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976. The Red Guards accomplished Mao’s every directive to attack selective components of Chinese society. In the disarray that developed during the revolution, fighting and devastation took place all the way through China. During this process thousands died, and millions were imprisoned or exiled. The Nien in her simple expression has successfully shown the world the true picture of the Chinese social and ethical condition during the revolution.

She has well linked the actions of the Mao and his uncontrolled army who commenced the Cultural Revolution, with an intention to wash out his opponents from offices and revolutionize Chinese society. Nien has been primarily the victim of Mao’s group, predominantly the Gang of Four piloted by Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, who had called directly the China’s youth through posters, newspaper editorials, and speeches. To attack reactionary power figures In June 1966 high school students in Beijing began forming groups called the Red Guards. When Mao voiced his approval of these groups, high school and university students around the country quickly formed other bands of Red Guards. In August Mao addressed millions of Red Guards in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Urged to destroy any aspects of old, elitist, or foreign culture, students broke into homes, vandalized cultural relics, and physically attacked teachers, artists, and civil officials. Lack of command and control and over enthusiastic revolutionary passion led to aggression between various Red Guard groups. Each group declared itself more loyal to Mao than the other one. In 1967 the Chinese military was called in to restore order, and violent clashes took place between Red Guards and soldiers, resulting in thousands of deaths.

The story of Nien is not only the days spent in jail but is actually a description of the unknown conditions of the then Chinese particularly in the early 1960s. The captivity of Nien is linked with the state of tension with the Soviet Union, which influenced Mao that the Russian upheaval had gone off course. This consecutively made him apprehensive that China would pursue the similar course. Plan carried out by his him to bring China out of the economic despair made Mao distrust the radical dedication and also disliked his own shrinking responsibility. He specially was alarmed from the urban social unrest prevailing in a society as conventionally superior. Mao therefore ultimately set few goals for the Cultural Revolution, firstly to substitute his chosen heir with leaders more loyal and faithful to his existing philosophy. Secondly it was to put right the Chinese Communist Party and thirdly to afford China's youths with a revolutionary skill. Finally it was to achieve some precise policy transformation so as to compose the educational, health care, and cultural systems less discriminatory. He originally followed these objectives all the way through an enormous mobilization of the country's urban youths. They were organized into groups called the Red Guards and Mao ordered the party and the army not to suppress the movement. Mao also put together a coalition of associates to help him carry out the Cultural Revolution. His wife, Jiang Qing fetched in a crowd of fundamental thinkers to head the cultural empire. Defense Minister Lin Biao made sure that the military stayed Maoist. Mao's longtime aide, Chen Boda, worked with security men Kang Sheng and Wang Dongxing to carry out Mao's directives about philosophy and security.

 

Premier Zhou Enlai played an important role in keeping the country running, even during periods of extraordinary chaos. Yet there were disagreements among these friends, and the record of the Cultural Revolution replicates these differences almost as much as it reflects Mao's own programs. Mao officially initiates the Cultural Revolution at the Eleventh Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee in August 1966. He closes down China's schools, and during the subsequent months he encouraged Red Guards to attack all customary standards and to check party officials by openly condemning them. Mao thought that this action would be useful both for the young people and for the party cadres that they attacked. The movement rapidly escalated and many elderly people and intellectuals were not only verbally attacked but were physically abused and were sent to captivity. Nien Cheng was one of them. The Red Guards broke into fanatical opponent groups, each claiming to be the true representative of Maoist thought. Mao's own personality cult, encouraged so as providing impetus to the movement, assumed religious proportions. The resulting chaos, terror, and paralysis totally disrupted the urban economy.

Nien besides giving the account of her routine of the brutal acts in the prison she has effectively made a reader to think about the power game, which was being played in the time of Mao se toung. She has brought out the brutal acts against the intellectuals. One of such act was seen later, when the Red army arrested the Wu Han, who was the deputy mayor of Peking. His fault was that in one of the play, Wu allegedly had employed symbolic devices to ridicule Mao and praise the overthrown former minister of defense, Peng Dehuai. The condemnation of Wu and his play on Nov. 10, 1965, characterized the opening torrent in an attack on cultural personalities and their thoughts. Nien has also given a school of thought to the readers about the desire to know the sequence of events, which had taken place out of the prison camps.

 

Nien has although gave her struggle to find the causes of death of her daughter but has also shown the ugly face of the prevailing forces in China. She has depicted as to how the Cultural Revolution gained impetus, and Mao turned for support to the youth as well as the army. In looking for forming a new system of education that would get rid of disparity between town and country, workers and peasants, and mental and manual labor, Mao received overwhelming support from the youth. As a main reason, the Cultural Revolution was initiated to renew activist principles for the coming generation of Chinese young people. During the spring of 1966 the attack against authors, scholars, and propaganda makers emphasized the cultural part of the Cultural Revolution. Nien in her account of tough solitary confinement has taught every one a lesson to know that it was through use of brutal force that the visible threatening targets in the fields of education and propaganda and high up in party circles were eliminated. The removal of Peng Zhen (P'eng Chen) and Lu Dingy (Lu Ting-yi) and subsequently of Zhou Yang, then tsar of the arts and literature, show that this was to be a methodical wash out. Nien is right to see that the secondary purpose of the Cultural Revolution was the elimination of leading cadres whom Mao held accountable for past ideological crimes and charged with errors in judgment. Another purpose of the Cultural Revolution, as then conceived, was to be a change in the superstructure. A bureaucratically run mechanism was to be changed into to a more popularly based system led personally by Mao and a simplified administration under his control. The first phase of the Cultural Revolution ended in August 1966 with the convening of a session of the Central Committee in which Mao issued his own big call for the condemnation and elimination of senior officials, and a 16-point Central Committee decision was issued, in which the wide sketch for the Cultural Revolution were laid down and supporters were gathered under the revolutionary flag. The immediate aim was to seize power from authorities. The focus of the fight was to be the urban strongholds. Nien was no exemption out of the coming actions but she was unaware of the whole development. Mao could never have accepted the development of China on the lines of the soviet Revolution that was negating his philosophy about the revolution. Therefore his thinking became the scope for accomplishment. Obviously realizing in advance that China would develop along the lines of the Soviet revolution, and concerned about his own place in history, Mao threw China's cities into disorder in a huge effort to turn around the historic course of action then in progress. He eventually failed in his pursuit, but his efforts produced such problems with which his next prominent opponent leadership would have to struggle for decades. The capitalists of the country were being eliminated.

Conclusion
Since the time the Nien lost her husband and was serving in the foreign national oil firm, many circles in the country did not like her. She was eventually to face the consequences of her relations with anti revolutionary forces. But the darkest part of the whole episode was her years of lost life in solitary confinement. This imprisonment made her more strong and brave women. The treatment she received in the small prison room with the hardly a place to move and have space to breath. She managed to develop her own style of exercising and finding a way to do physical exercises. Nien Cheng is in jail and her meal has arrived, but her hands are tied behind her backside and she has to work out how eat the rice out of the bowl. She finds a solution and she spreads a towel, turns and, with fastens hands, with difficulty scrape a bit out of the bowl onto the towel. Then she brings down her head to the