Customer Reviews

Troublemaker

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"For 19 years, I was one of those prisoners, held for vague offenses against my homeland. My captors said they wanted to reform me, but really, what they wanted was to work me until I dropped. I was lost in the camps that are strategically scattered all over China, where millions of prisoners produce good for Chinese industry. The authorities have different names for the different stages of their camps. I am an alumnus of three stages: reform through labor (laogai), reeducation through labor (laojiao), forced-labor placement (jiuye). For my purposes, I call the entire system laogai." Harry Wu

I have lived or traveled to many different countries excluding China. A friend ask me recently to go to China and I found myself strangely disinterested. China IS an interesting place, a place of the Great Wall, of delicious cooking, fine silk, martial arts, of the original pasta and gun powder, a country full of tradition and culture...so, what's the problem here, I asked myself. Then I remembered a book that really GOT to me...."Troublemaker" by Harry Wu.

As strange as it sounds, I don't want to go to a place where with a bald face, capriciously and callously, insanely and puzzlingly, people are mistreated. Sounds vague? Read on.

There are places in the world where atrocities against humans by other humans are still committed. They give it the name "human rights violation" but it should be called, "people being cruel, mean and destructive to other people." Africa comes to mind. And, North Korea too and other places in the world. It isn't just the developing countries. Even in the U.S., things like this happen. You don't think so? How about the Oklahoma city bombing? How about the dragging death of a black man in Jasper, Texas by some white men who chose the man just because of the different color of his skin?

China is no worse or no better than other places where human are mistreated and humans suffer, but I just did not want to go to China...I was creeped out after reading Harry Wu's book.

Harry Wu spent 19 years in a hard labor camp for making a statement against the Soviet strike down of an Hungarian political uprising. He was a student at the time and idealistic and still very much innocent. He criticized the Soviet's policies not knowing that the Chinese had backed Moscow on what happened in Hungary AND that for making this one statement, his life would be altered forever. When Harry got out of the laogai, the Chinese gulag, he was 42 years old and it was 1979. For ONE remark, he lost 19 years of his life as well as his wife and his youth. His remark was probably more benign than this Amazon.com review I am writing.

What can I say to you...find and read this book if you are interested in China. It will tell you about what goes on under the surface of every day life in China. It isn't about communism vs. democracy, free market vs. collectivism, it is about a human being being mistreated by the collective just because it can happen. Does this sound like science fiction? It sounds like "1984" that people's thoughts and views are sensored and punishments are doled out for them.

So each time you go to a discount store and buy silk flowers, each time you see a "made in China" label on some cheap trinket, you will know that it came from the labor of people shut off in laogais which are scattered all over China, just hidden from view, hoping to go unnoticed. And what of secret organ harvasting and sales? It is still going on: "prisoners" are executed sometimes for their vital organs. If you are young and healthy, then you maybe a target because your organs would be valuable to some rich old man in China or Hong Kong.

Find out what goes on in the world...many things besides the wonderful world of Amazon.com goes on. We are so previlleged to read and be "educated" and write and live this wonderful blessed life, but many of our fellow human beings are in hell on Earth. This book makes you remember this.

The Chinese have an enormous capacity to absorb and parrot back mistruths, without so much as a blush. I had lunch with one Chinese academic in Beijing not long ago who told me with a straight face that no one died at Tiananmen Square during the 1989 democracy protests. On the face of it, an absurd statement, and yet no less paradoxical than many of the things that the average Chinese says and often times believes. Harry Wu understands this enormous capacity of the Chinese people to adopt a more convenient view of reality, at least for conversational purposes, rather than to face the repression of the Beijing government. After all, Wu is a survivor of 19 years in the Chinese gulag, an unspoken penal system that few Chinese either know about or are willing to acknowledge. For the Westerner who is steeped in the history of the Mao years, China is indeed a puzzle. On the face of it, China resembles very much any other developing capitalist-oriented country. Americans, more than any other people, tend to equate capitalism with democracy. Yet, there are numerous examples of capitalist enterprise economies for which any thoughts of democracy and respect for individual liberties are but a dream. China is simply the latest and biggest example. Bereft of a free press, governed by an undemocratic clique, and endowed with the largest penal system the world has likely ever known, China mystifies us. Harry Wu exposes our myths and misconceptions and argues for Westerners not to brush aside the truths in the pursuit of Asian trade and market share. Many Chinese are antagonized by Wu. China is indeed a better place for the average Chinese than it was during the Mao years. Many Chinese seem to feel that if they just keep quiet, things will slowly continue to get better. Yet, millions of Chinese remain imprisoned, often times for "political" offenses that you or I would find laughable. In the meantime, China is run by unelected elite who, under the guise of capitalism, are allowed to profit from the proceeds of prison labor, while the average Chinese needs to guard his words carefully for fear of becoming a detainee in the "laogai," the Chinese prison labor system.

Harry Wu's heroic account of his travels to China to document human rights abuses is an incredible read. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in hearing the truth about China's barbaric policies towards its own citizens. Mr. Wu helps to uncover the socialist mindset held by the Chinese and their leaders which allows them to deny that forced labor exists and that the laogai are actually "reform" camps. I would like to thank Mr. Wu for revealing the truth of what goes on behind the wall of lies that the communists have erected. Throughout the book you will be brought to tears at the inhumanities experienced by the Chinese "workers" and the book brings them vividly to light. It would surprise me if anyone could not understand why after serving over a decade in the camps that Wu would want to return. He makes it clear that he wants noone else to suffer the injustices he has faced. Thank you Mr. Wu. You are truly an American and a hero. I admire you greatly and hope you continue your work.

As a great appreciator of many things Chinese, I am not a big fan of their present state. So much seems to get lost in subtle parsing of the issues on this massive country. I think there has to be some room to just speak simply and perhaps curtly about the matter. This was a very great culture, now they are just rude. I thought of this fact when I saw an excellent interview with this well-spoken author, Harry Wu, on the World Over program, with Raymond Arroyo, on EWTN; just about the only thing I truly have ever found newsworthy on the show. Indeed, for once the premise of the interview jibed with reality. Namely, that a lot has been left out recently about China in the mainstream media. So this interview actually filled a real need. And from the Catholic perspective for once they have a real issue of complaint that many can agree on. This is a country that does not allow any real, true freedom of religion, and forces faith-bodies to accept either national churches, which are a sheer contradiction in terms, or some form of state control. Their entire attitude is outrageous. Because of the enormous population of the country this attitude will have a disastrous effect on the world, and already is. I say as someone who is regularly in Chinese medicine shops buying my Hsia Yao Wan and Yin Chiao, both patent remedies that are important to my well-being. But beyond everything else I think what is potentially most telling is the state of those who are the most lucky in Chinese society. Logically, those who have enough money to travel must be amongst that group. And if our recent trip to China is any indication, even those lucky people, tourists like us, after years of terrible misrule have been forced into a hostile parody of human behavior. I have been all around the world, in many poor spots, and the Chinese after 60 years of Communist rule are just in a terrible state of human behavior. (People in Taiwan are quite different, which kind of proves the point) It is kind of an organized, homogenized brutishness. That this is what is left of such a great culture should be a clarion call and warning to us in the West with our own vanishing culture. There is yet a lower step of rudeness. Still, when we gazed out of our lovely room in Shanghai at the Broadway Mansions Hotel, with some nice food in our stomachs, looking at the incredible Bund and the garish island of towering behemoths in staggeringly well-lit massiveness, one could only suspect that that surely somehow underneath it all is still one of the greatest human cultures that ever lived. But not now.

Very Sad and true first hand account of Mr. Wu struggle in China, in a Repressive typical communist system, and how he was and is ever so defiant to that system, As any Freedom Loving Man would, China is Not free, Chinese Capitialism is not Capitialism in any sense. It is still A Totalarian Regime. Cuba,China,N.Korea,Venezuela, Iran,Ecuador,Nicaragua,and many others will one day be free from puppet regimes and That hideous form of government known as Communism and it's cousins.

This book is a very interesting and thought provoking account of Harry Wu's courage in travelling to China to try and expose more of the injustices of the Chinese forced labour laogai prisons.

Hongda Wu's book is an eye-opener for any reader. However, Wu is unable to make the reader empathize with him; the reader never truly understands why Wu chooses, more than once, to risk all he has to return to China. In addition, Wu's chronology may confuse the reader, leaving the reader lost as to what happened next. Wu's description of his love for his wife is touching; however, his writing style is a bit dry

HARRY WU - TROUBLEMAKER, is definitely an interesting autobiography,
for knowing next to nothing about Asia, China, Mao Tse Tung, laogai
or reform labor prison camps, social norms, mores, how politics
permeates every layer of society and how one's life and freedom
can abruptly end from one second to the next, on uttering a phrase
critical of the regime, critical of a political decision made by
the government. The only way to remain in good standing, is to
eliminate all personal thoughts, reasoning, discernment, desire for
political expression, an every greater perfection in government
performance and justice, or functioning of society.

For Judeo-Christian countries, such as Spain, France, Canada, USA,
Portugal, Germany, Belgium or Italy, to contemplate being put under
the regime of Mao Tse Tung, (carrying a Little Red Book of phrases),
without which they will be arrested, or prisoner organ harvesting,
or executing or imprisoning individuals without any thoughts, as
easily as lighting a cigarette, using it, and disposing it - are
matters beyong the grasp of imagination or dreams.

This is not to say that Western countries are perfect. Only that
Wu's book is an eye-opener, as it brings to light the true nature of
what to expect from government, in China, if one resides there, and
does business with it. Same old story, over 3,000 years. The more
things change, the more they stay the same.

The negative side of this work, is clearly of the author, who admits
having been raised as an iconoclast, from Italian Jesuit
instructors, as a Christian, with freedom of self-thought and
expression (erroneously) having been inculcated into him, in a
nation that allowed anything but that. Also, the lack of author in
doing like the majority of citizens do to survive and enjoy their
lives, which is to be good chameleons, blending in with the times,
with the political currents at any given time, to show good
emotional intelligence. On this front, the author, having been
deported from China (his homeland) showed his lack of ability to
adapt, like everyone else, giving a modicum of reason to the Chinese
regime for admonishing his behavior, his obsession with bringing to
light embarrassing structures and processes in China, and not
minding his own business. On the positive side, a very optimistic,
strong, resistant and courageous human rights activist.