Life and Death in Shanghai
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (November 2009) |
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. |
| Life and Death in Shanghai | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Author | Nien Cheng |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Biographies & Memoirs |
| Publisher | Grove Press , Penguin Books |
| Publication date | May 1987 |
| Pages | 547 pages |
Life and Death in Shanghai is an autobiography published in November 1987 by Nien Cheng (Chinese: 鄭念; pinyin: Zhèng Niàn) from exile in the United States, and details her six-year arrest during the Cultural Revolution.
Cheng was arrested in late 1966 after Red Guards looted her home; 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 Cultural Revolution's first days and subsequent imprisonment for more than six years. During that time, she was under pressure to make a false confession that she was a spy for "the imperialists" (Royal Dutch Shell is a Dutch company). Cheng refused, and was tortured as a result (her autobiography goes into great detail, to the extent that she had to put the manuscript away many times because the memories were too haunting). She was eventually released from prison under the pretence that her behaviour had showed progress. She initially refused to leave the prison, until she felt she had received sufficient acknowledgment from her captors that she should never have been there in the first place.
When released from jail in 1973, she found that her daughter Meiping, who was going to school to become a film actress, had been murdered by the Red Guards, although the official response was that she committed suicide (Cheng later conducted a discreet investigation herself and found that the scenario was impossible). After being relocated from her spacious home to a mere two bedrooms (and having to share the house with another family who spied on her), Cheng was allowed to continue with her life. She lived in China until 1980, when the political climate was warm enough for her to apply for a visa to the United States to visit family. She never returned, first emigrating to Canada, and later to Washington, D.C. where she lived until her death on November 2, 2009.
