Customer Reviews

Caught In A Tornado: A Chinese American Woman Survives the Cultural Revolution

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This Cultural Revolution memoir is somewhat unique in that it is about an American born Chinese woman who returned to China before WWII and decided to stay after Mao came to power. She got tired of her philandering spendthrift husband, left him in Hong Kong, and decided to become an English teacher in Shanghai to be near her three grown children. Wen, Zengde was 66 years old in 1976 when the decade long Cultural Revolution started. There is another similar book also by an elderly woman, Nien Cheng, Life and Death in Shanghai, but I got board with it and didn't get past the first few chapters. Caught in a Tornado is a pretty fast read. Many Chinese committed suicide, especially the elderly who had less reason to endure the torment of the Cultural Revolution being so near the end of their lives, but Wen bravely stuck it out. She endured repeated beatings and interrogations, mostly from her students who served as the thought police, and survived. I suspect the ordeal shortened her life, however, because her sister who spent life in America lived to be at least 102. Wen passed away at 88. This book is short and provides a good overview of the sufferings and insanity that prevailed during the Cultural Revolution. Most appalling were the accounts of children turning on, and in some cases, killing parents and cannibalism in Guangxi Province; see the book Scarlet Memorial; read it on an empty stomach and keep in mind that the atrocities were mostly committed by ignorant peasants absent religious beliefs.

The parallels between Mao's China and Afghanistan under the Taliban are pretty striking. Change China to Afghanistan, Mao to Allah, Mao's red book of quotations to the Qu'ran, and the Red Guards to the Taliban. The Four Olds could be men without beards, women unveiled, music and movies, schools other than madrasas, and any book besides the Qu'ran. In both cases schools were shut down and only one subject was allowed to be studied; in Afghanistan it was the Qu'ran (the Taliban's interpretation) and in China it was Mao's book of quotations. Both the Red Guards and the Taliban were able to break into any home anytime and destroy or confiscate items deemed counter-revolutionary or un-Islamic. Those perceived as not complying with the extremists, physically or mentally, were beaten, imprisoned, and sometimes murdered. The Red Guards attacked those in western dress, especially women with "unrevolutionary" bourgeois hair styles and make up. The Taliban did the same thing to women who dared to show their hair, faces, or leave the house without a male relative escort. They also attacked men for not having foot long beards. The only difference is that membership in the Red Guards, while restricted by class background, was open to both genders.