Since good intentions and sympathy for others often led people into trouble, the Chinese people had invented a new proverb that said, ‘The more you do, the more trouble you have; the less you do, the less trouble you have. If you do nothing whatever, you will become a model citizen.

I must not only keep alive, but I must be as strong as granite, so that no matter how much I was knocked about, I could remain unbroken.

I love China! I love my country even though it is not always good ro right,′ my daughter proclaimed in a firm voice. Her words brought tears to my eyes. I also had a deep and abiding love for the land of my ancestors even though, because of my class status, I had become an outcast.

Ji-li’s deeply moving story should be on the shelf of every person’s library. Her courage in the face of adversity and her steadfast loyalty and love for her family are truly inspirational for young and old alike.

From the point of view of the Chinese Communist Party, the greatest casualties of the Cultural Revolution were the Party’s prestige and its ability to govern.

One of the symptoms of senile dementia is suspicion and the other is paranoia.

They learned from an early age that the classless society of Communism had a more rigid class system than the despised capitalist society, where a man could move from the lower to the upper class by his own effort.

While I listened to the words of homage to Mao, I remembered Mao’s awesome power, like a blanket over China threatening to smother whomever he chose.

For so many years, the official propaganda machinery had denounced humanitarianism as sentimental trash and advocated human relations based entirely on class allegiance. But my personal experience had shown me that most of the Chinese people remained kind, sensitive, and compassionate even though the cruel reality of the system under which they had to live compelled them to lie and pretend.

But it also had many large posters with messages of a more peaceful nature. These extolled the country’s economic achievement since the Cultural Revolution, which was supposed to have liberated the forces of production and increased productivity. Of course, the Cultural Revolution had done just the opposite. Official lies like this, habitually indulged in and frequently displayed by the authorities, served no purpose except to create the impression that truth was unimportant.