At the age of fifteen my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord general.
When I was in China, Mao was Chairman, and parents were terrified to tell their children anything that differed from the party line in case the children repeated it and endangered the whole family.
I like to have Chinese furniture in my home as a constant and painful reminder of how much has been destroyed in China. The contrast between the beauty of the past and the ugliness of the modern is no...
As a child, my idea of the West was that it was a miasma of poverty and misery, like that of the homeless 'Little Match Girl'in the Hans Christian Andersen story. When I was in the boarding nursery an...
When he asked my grandmother if she would mind being poor, she said she would be happy just to have her daughter and himself: 'If you have love, even plain water is sweet.
Although my book is banned I am still allowed to go to China and travel. There is no longer the kind of control that Mao used to have-there have been deep fundamental changes in society.
If you have love, even plain cold water is sweet.
Father is close, Mother is close, but neither is as close as Chairman Mao.
When a man gets power, even his chickens and dogs rise to heaven.
Go in the direction your head is pointed in.
Boredom was as exhausting as backbreaking labor.