Customer Reviews

Bitter Winds: A Memoir of My Years in China's Gulag

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Bitter Winds is Harry Wu's convincing story of his 19 years in the Red Chinese gulag, the government's slave labor camp system for political dissidents and common criminals. Committed without trial, charges or definite sentence, Harry survived years of senseless political indoctrination, forced labor, beatings, the brutality of fellow prisoners, cold, and starvation. His only crimes were his status as a member of the pre-revolutionary Chinese middle class and his candid criticism of the Communist Party done at the party's invitation. The difference between the terror suffered by Harry and the Stalinist death camps is that China's concentration camps continue to this day. Why didn't someone do something about the Nazi and Soviet camps? Why does the U.S. State Dept. ignore the Red Chinese murders occurring today? Today's leaders of China are undoubtedly proud of their camp system, patterned after that of their erstwhile ally Jos. Stalin, which was revealed in books like Victor Herman's Coming Out of the Ice and the recent account Man Is Wolf to Man.

I've been very aware of the Holocaust and all its horrors and injustices. I have seen movies, read articles, read books; all the information is there. But the Cultural Revolution? I only knew that it happened in China - I wasn't even sure what years it occured. I had no concept of its irrational and unjust practices. No idea of the horrible lengths of time people were incarcerated, no idea of the revolting conditions and unspeakable starvation. Harry Wu is right. He did need to write this and inform us. I kept thinking back to my own life during the years he was describing. 1960-61-62? graduating from college, getting married and having my first child. Did I have my head in the sand or did we not have the coverage of events that we have today? I didn't know (or maybe wasn't interested) in events on the other side of the world - except to urge my children to clean their plates because children in China were starving. I had no idea! Harry Wu writes candidly, clearly and courageously. This is a book that I will not forget and will urge friends to read. I travel to China in June for 3 weeks. All the people I will see who are my age (62) experienced some form of repression, indignity, involvement - the list goes on. How I admire them and honor them for their perserverance. Thank you, Harry Wu!

I had the pleasure of having coffee with Mr. Harry Wu one evening. Hearing him talk about China over that cup of coffee was a moving experience that I will never forget. His book carries that same fire. The book acquaints one with the Chinese people, their deep suffering, and even brings one to a greater understanding of suffering in anyone. Also, the book is simply written, so it is easy to read.

Harry Wu spent 19 years in a hellish Chinese Gulag for having come from a Bourgeouis background , and having been judged as insufficiently reformed into a 'new Socialist person'.
Here he documents the conditions in the Chinese gulag system , a giant factory of torture , starvation and death.
Over 60 million Chinese have died since the Communists seized power in China in 1949.
It is a story of the unbelievable brutality and evil of Maoist China , that still continues today. It is also a story of survival , and the unbelievable odds under which Harry Wu survived. He dedicates this powerful expose to the millions who died. And still Red China remains one of the most opressive and brutal totalitarian dictatorships on earth today.

It is a travesty that Red China enjoys such international standing and was even awarded the 2008 Olympic Games
More must be done to expose and oppose China's genocidal tyranny.

After having gone into exile in the 1980's , Harry Wu returned secretly to China in 1991 to film the conditions in the hideous death factory gulags.

"Bitter Winds" is at once fascinating and horrifying.I knew that China was (and still is) a scary placeto be on the wrong side of the government, but nothing can bring it home like a first-hand account. Harry Wu spent 19 years of his life in prison camps and forced labor camps all over China for crimes no more serious than speaking his mind too openly on a few occasions. He was forced to endure the most humiliating treatment imaginable under terrible conditions including near starvation during China's famines, where the prisoners had it even worse than the normal citizens. If you worry about the thought police, read this book and it will put your worries in perspective -- though certainly not to rest. Now that Wu is again incarcerated in China, where he was trying to gather more information on the forced labor system currently in operation, this book is that much more timely.

Unbelievable memoir, one that stays with you and perhaps changes your perspective on life. Harry Wu brings a voice to those many Chinese who, arrested often without cause, spent and lost their lives in the grossly inhumane conditions of Chinese prison labor camps. The unjustness is beyond vast and continues today. This book should be required reading in college sociology, political science and history classes as it is unequivocally insightful and informative as well as meaningful. I hope that Harry Wu can continue to carry his important message in this newly adopted country that adores him and cherishes his very important work. We are listening, Harry.

I love it

This is a terrifically written book. I had to read this for school and am so thankful for our Professor introducing this book. It really makes you "see" what is occurring with vivid story telling and description. Definitely a book to read if you want to get an idea of what happened during the transition in China, and the things its people have endured.

What a nightmare Chinese Communism is! The suffering and the 19 years of detention of poor Harry Wu have indignated me and strengthened my individualism and my hatred for the masses, for proletarians and for revolutions in general. This book reminds me of John del Vecchio's novel about Cambodia's Kmer Rouges, in which the brain washing and the de-humanization of the main character are described at length. There is a war going on between the "people" and the aristocrats and the intellectuals. The Chinese Cultural revolution of the 1960s is just an example of this conflict. Needless to say, I side with the intellectuals, and with the power of free thought against vile labor and hard work.

Syndicated pundit Don Feder once referred to modern day China as "the reincarnation of the Third Reich with lo mien noodles." Harry Wu's autobiographical tome of the hellish conditions inside Chinese labor camps lends substantial credence to that caustic description. As tragic as the nightmare he endured is, the situation in modern China has in many ways has deteriorated even further. Harry Wu is one of many children; such a family would never be allowed under the current one-child policy. Actually, it is easy to see why a depraved and violent population controlling policy has been instituted. As the Wus demonstrate, the family is the hardest institution to destroy, and with large and strong families the norm, China's insensate government would be hampered in its drive for domination over all aspects of life.

More than a few of the horrors he documents have a frightening familiarity. Anyone familiar with the opinion-controlling practices currently at place Ivy League colleges will see an eerie counterpart to China's universities in the late 1950. Harry Wu writes of "the official encouragement of divergent opinions" as the nation transformed over to socialism. Like the modern diversity fad, the semantics did not match the policy. "Divergent opinions" yielded blind devotion to the Communist state, just as diversity training demands the surrender of individuality in favor of group labels and a collective mentality. Hostility to religion has become chic among the U.S. hoi polloi which also corresponds to China's ferociously enforced atheism. As a boy Harry Wu attended a Catholic School, but with little warning the nuns and priests were forcefully expelled from China. In another scary correlations, certain segments of American illuminati similarly disdain large families as impractical or burdensome upon women.

America's most admirable heroes are now under heavy fire from much of the elite establishment. Who hasn't heard George Washington denigrated as a slave owner or Abraham Lincoln as a racist who reluctantly freed the slaves? China also mastered the art of rewriting history. Wu discusses how Confucius was condemned as a reprobate because his teachings brilliantly controverted Communists doctrine.

The labor camp conditions he graphically describes are inhuman and heartbreaking. The fact that he even survived such brutality is astounding; his willingness to return to China and document the still thriving barbarism is nothing short of miraculous. Wu deserves much credit for that act of doughty selflessness.

As the Unites States Congress prepares to debate extending China's undeserved Trade Status, "Bitter Winds" should be read by every concerned American, and those issues should be raised with his or her congressman.