Life and Death in Shanghai

Nien Cheng writes of personal loss, suffering, and injustice with unusually lucid and mature prose. She is impressive as story teller, an historian, but most of all as a writer. One of the most effective qualities of Nien Cheng's writing is the remarkable restraint she employs when describing unfair and frankly inhumane actions perpetrated against her and her family. She describes her arrest, captivity, and daily efforts to challenge her tormentors with cool objectivity.

One of the most impressive parts of the book is the account of how Nien Cheng studied Chairman Mao's collected works in prison. Despite the fact that Mao's policies had personally harmed her and were tearing China apart, she studied his works in earnest and evaluated them objectively. She concluded that Mao was a brilliant guerrilla warfare strategist but that he was only capable of destruction, not creativity.

Nien Cheng enhances her personal narrative by describing relevant Chinese historical events. As a result, the reader acquires a sense of context and is better able to understand why certain things happen to her. For example, Nien Cheng is repeatedly persecuted for her alleged support of Liu Xiaoqi. During one of her interrogations she is bold enough to declare that his policies, as elucidated by her jailers, sound perfectly sensible. Then after years in captivity, she is suddenly treated with more kindness and praised for her positive remarks about Liu Xiaoqi. Nien Cheng explains to the reader that during this time, political tidings had turned against the radical Gang of Four and that moderate factions in the Chinese Communist Party had rehabilitated Liu Xiaoqi.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in modern Chinese history, in survival and triumph, or to anyone who enjoys encountering the English language at its best. My deep respect and appreciation go out to Nien Cheng.


Insightful, moving and leaves you speechless   January 31, 2000
lightspeed (USA)
51 out of 59 found this review helpful

In 1986, when I first read this novel, I was 16. I was mesmerized by it. TIME Magazine had printed an excerpt of the novel and after reading the excerpt, I bought the book. Today, in 2000, it's been almost 14 years later and I can still remember the content of this powerful novel. I think it is amazingly well written, very detailed, historically correct and extremely moving. The insights you gain about life during the Cultural Revolution give you a light into that dark age of chaos and pain. Today, when I watch movies, read books or hear about other people's stories, I still find myself reflecting back to Nien Cheng's novel. Nien Cheng is extremely courageous and is built of the fiber of the "old" Chinese ways. There is a lot of sadness on her tale as well about how a nation tried to denounce itself and forget about its past. This book is a MUST READ if you have any ounce of interest in Chinese people, their history or their culture. It's also a MUST READ if you are a Chinese for it'd allow you an insight into yourself and your land of origin, China. Be prepared to realize that after you've read this book, you're going to be a different person.


Documenting a Strong but Overproud Personality   December 14, 1999
16 out of 26 found this review helpful

I read this book to prepare for my final presentation in a class on conscience and political struggle. As Nien Cheng describes her experiences during China's Cultural Revolution, the reader cannot help but feel for her. What distinguishes this tale is the fact that Ms. Cheng does not need flowery prose to illustrate her story. Instead, the language is straightforward, telling nothing but the facts. Those facts speak for themselves. Bare, raw details of her daily struggles with torture (both physical and mental), disease, and discomfort over her six and a half years in solitary confinement provide all the illumination the reader needs. Stanley Karnow,of Washington Post Book World, calls the book a "chronicle of her courage, fortitude, and...stubborn integrity." As an autobiography, the story does draw much of its success from the subject's character. For the most part, I agree with Mr. Karnow about Ms. Cheng's personality. However strong the story, one aspect of it bothered me. When Ms. Cheng finally is released (no, that is not a giveaway- she writes her memoirs in the past tense, so you know from the start that she gets out and publishes this document), she states (and shows) that she is hardly changed by her experience. The Communists locked her up on charges of being a capitalist and an elitist, a member of the bourgeois. While I do not agree with their treatment of her, their assessment of her character may not be far off. Ms. Cheng is issued an apartment upon her release, but she soon considers agitating for a whole house to herself. In the meantime, the street in front of her apartment complex is lined with makeshift shacks, home to Chinese peasants unable to afford housing. The whole time, she considers them a nuisance, trespassing on her private property. Though she could not possibly help them all, Ms. Cheng does not even display sympathy for their plight. Perhaps the author had some particular reason for this apparent lack of feeling. If she did, it is not addressed. Thus, though I appreciated her vitality and strong spirit in enduring hardship, I left the book believing that she did in fact feel she was above her fellow citizens.


The Very Best Memoir of the Cultural Revolution   June 7, 2000
Renee Thorpe (Karangasem, Bali)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful

There is now an almost overwhelming amount of personal accounts of life during Mao's Cultural Revolution. The tales of atrocities and abuses are many, but this is a particularly extraordinary memoir, in my opinion the best of the lot.

Nien Cheng suffered enormously, and her book recounts her persecution in amazing detail. She had more than 6 years to recall every degrading and unjust incident, and it is remarkably all here. Yet it is never for a moment boring or tedious. She writes beautifully and appreciatively of the tasty snack her cook gave her the day she went to be screamed at by an auditorium full of Red Guards. It is this extraordinary attention to simple goodness and the author's triumphant but humble survival that sets this book apart.

Someone said to me, "oh, I could never buy that book. I couldn't stand the pain." My friend was mistaken. Nien Cheng's book is about pain, but not defeat. To be sure, it is about the hellish consequences of a society gone mad, but her own clear conscience reigns supreme.

It is a quite beautiful story of the triumph of the human spirit. Outstanding.


The sob story of a stubborn snob   May 28, 2002
Elisabeth W. Movius (Shanghai China)
13 out of 31 found this review helpful

"Life & Death in Shanghai" has consistantly remained one of the best-selling books about Shanghai. It is fundamentally, however, a memoir rather than a "book about Shanghai", which is why it sells so well. Unfortunately, many readers will take it to be a Shanghai book or a China book, but it is misleading as such.

I realize that many have enjoyed "Life & Death in Shanghai", and even found it inspiring. That's fine. Only readers should take their inspiration with a grain of salt. I do not deny that Nien Cheng is a remarkable, formidable woman. My problem is that Nien Cheng is far too impressed with her own remarkableness, which ultimately makes it difficult to sympathise with her. I do not deny that Nien Cheng suffered greatly during the Cultural Revolution, but so did hundreds of millions others, many far, far worse than she, which makes her self-righteous sense of victimhood almost offensive.

Western in her education and sensibilities, Nien Cheng wrote "Life & Death in Shanghai" with the Western reader deliberately in mind, particularly the Western reader ignorant about China. Her preachy Christian references and repetitive Bible-thumping are clear plays for sympathy, and it feels as manipulative as a Hollywood soundtrack. Puh-lease.

Ms. Cheng's religion, I believe, advises that "Pride commeth before a fall". Yet her narrative is infused with her pride and sense of entitlement. I know Chinese who, like Nien Cheng, are remainders of the Old Shanghai elite. Even with their wealth long-gone, they are erudite, accomplished, and above all exquisitely courteous. The manners of these old scions would take my breath away if they weren't so skilled at making everyone about them feel comfortable. Yes, they have every reason to be proud, but they also had the good sense to get out of China after the Communists took over.

Nien Cheng sniffs daintily at the uncouth ways of the unwashed Chinese masses, yet she chose to return to China even as the unwashed masses were conducting a revolution against wealthy, foreign connected capitalists such as herself. Perhaps her pride clouded her judgement. There is nothing wrong with having a high opinion of oneself, particularly when merited, but it makes for tedious companionship and even more tedious reading when not tempered with an ability to self-mock. If Nien Cheng had a sense of humor about her arrogance, she may or may not have avoided her tragedy, but she definately would have written a better book.