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Nien Cheng Wikipedia

Nien Cheng (鄭念) (born in Beijing, 1915) is a Chinese-American author who recounted her harrowing experiences of the Cultural Revolution in her memoir Life and Death in Shanghai. Mrs. Cheng became a target of attack by Red Guards (China)|Red Guards due to her management of a foreign firm in Shanghai. Maoist revolutionaries used this fact to claim that Mrs. Cheng was a British spy in order to strike at Communist Party of China|Communist Party moderates for allowing the firm to operate in China after 1949.

Mrs. Cheng endured six-and-a-half years of squalid and inhumane conditions in prison, all the while refusing to give any false confession. Her daughter Meiping Cheng, a prominent Shanghai film actress, was murdered by Maoists after the young woman refused to denounce her mother. Mrs. Cheng was rehabilitated after the Gang of Four (China)|Gang of Four was arrested, and she used the opportunity to leave for the United States, as she was still a constant target of surveillance by those who wished her ill.
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Category:Chinese American writers|Cheng, Nien

Last Modified:   2005-03-02