Spanning 35 years, this enthralling memoir chronicles the life of a woman, a survivor, who has been buffeted by the winds of history. Ting-xing Ye was born in Shanghai, the fourth child of a factory owner who had his factory taken from him. By the age of thirteen, her parents were dead.
The Cultural Revolution then tore Ye's family apart. Writing with grim irony, she offers a riveting account of her work on a prison farm, where, as the child of a "capitalist," she was continually subjected to humiliating psychological torture.
She then wryly relates her change in fortune when she found herself accepted into Beijing University and eventually, in a consummate irony, was offered a job in the Chinese Secret Police. Managing to get herself reassigned to the Foreign Ministry as a translator, the girl from the prison farm found herself translating for the delegations of such dignitaries as Queen Elizabeth, Ronald Reagan and Imelda Marcos.
In a moving and dramatic final section, Ye writes about her feudal-style marriage, her falling in love with a Canadian, and her eventual defection to Canada.
I was absolutely blown away at how incredible this book was, how engagingly written it was, and what an amazing survivor Ye Ting-Xing is.
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