This life story of Linda Liu covers her youth, career, marriage, and motherhood during the Mao era of China. Linda delights in spending her early childhood life in a traditional family in the countryside, especially in her maternal grandpas home. But in 1947, Lindas grandpa is declared in the rich-peasant class, and then the government confiscates his land and house, and the seven family members escaped to Beijing. Linda loves her courtyard home and the surrounding area close to Tiananmen Square. In the 1950s, as a teenager, Linda participates in various social activities and trusts Mao and believes the Chinese Communist partys propagandas that communism will be carried out in China for the good of all. But her father loses his business and job because of the socialist transformation of capitalist enterprises. Millions people starve to death during Three Years of Great Chinese Famine, and Linda also starves and suffers from TB. She doubts if socialism can save people. Linda finds her soul mate at her university, and they love and support each other whatever happens. In 1965, Linda is assigned to Xinjiang with too little work and is separated from her family for seven years because people do not have freedom of speech, religion, job change, and residence under Maos class struggle theory. During the Culture Revolution, many people die and suffer persecution, including her mother, who is wrongly struggled against almost to death. Working in an institute, Linda experiences a typical intellectual life. After the anti-Rightist struggle, intellectuals are in an awkward position, which leads many to die in middle ages from lack of food and mental pressure. After Mao, she and people wish China will have a big change.

Professor Schram offers a fascinating and sure-footed analysis of Mao's intellectual itinerary.

This book gives a unique personal glimpse of modern Chinese history from the beginning of the century to the "Cultural Revolution" through the eyes of one of the builders of the Chinese Red Army. Born into a poor peasant family in Hunan Province, Marshal Peng Dehuai (1898-1974) enlisted in 1916 in one of the old warlords' armies. While rising through the ranks to become a regimental commander, Peng Dehuai worked underground to organize soldiers' rights groups. He joined the Communist Party shortly before leading the Pingjiang Uprising in 1928 against reactionary rule. After founding the Third Army of the Chinese Red Army, Peng Dehuai went on to a brilliant career as an eminent commander before and during the epic Long March, in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the War of Liberation, and in the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea. After Liberation in 1949, he senred as Vice-Premier of the State Council and Minister of Defence. Marshal Peng Dehuai fell into political disgrace in 1959 after addressing a letter to Chairman Mao Zedong pointing out some of the problems in the "Great Leap Forward." Under virtual house arrest for most of the last 16 years of his life, Marshal Peng did manual labour and wrote biographical notes in response to demands for "confessions." He died under persecution during the "Cultural Revolution" on November 29, 1974. Exonerated by the CPC Central Committee in 1978, Marshal Peng Dehuai has been restored to his rightful place in history as one of the greatest military leaders in China's revolution.

In his widely anticipated memoir, Ai Weiwei--one of the world's most famous artists and activists--tells a century-long epic tale of China through the story of his own extraordinary life and the legacy of his father, Ai Qing, the nation's most celebrated poet. Hailed as "the most important artist working today" by the Financial Times and as "an eloquent and unsilenceable voice of freedom" by The New York Times, Ai Weiwei has written a sweeping memoir that presents a remarkable history of China over the last 100 years while illuminating his artistic process. Once an intimate of Mao Zedong, Ai Weiwei's father was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as "Little Siberia," where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol. With candor and wit, he details his return to China and his rise from artistic unknown to art world superstar and international human rights activist--and how his work has been shaped by living under a totalitarian regime. Ai Weiwei's sculptures and installations have been viewed by millions around the globe, and his architectural achievements include helping to design the iconic Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing. His political activism has long made him a target of the Chinese authorities, which culminated in months of secret detention without charge in 2011. Here, for the first time, Ai Weiwei explores the origins of his exceptional creativity and passionate political beliefs through his own life story and that of his father, whose own creativity was stifled. At once ambitious and intimate, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows offers a deep understanding of the myriad forces that have shaped modern China, and serves as a timely reminder of the urgent need to protect freedom of expression.

A woman who spent more than six years in solitary confinement during Communist China's Cultural Revolution discusses her time in prison. Reissue. A New York Times Best Book of the Year.

The Chinese Communist system was from its very inception based on an inherent contradiction and tension, and the Cultural Revolution is the latest and most violent manifestation of that contradiction. Built into the very structure of the system was an inner conflict between the desiderata, the imperatives, and the requirements that technocratic modernization on the one hand and Maoist values and strategy on the other. The Cultural Revolution collects four papers prepared for a research conference on the topic convened by the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies in March 1968. Michel Oksenberg opens the volume by examining the impact of the Cultural Revolution on occupational groups including peasants, industrial managers and workers, intellectuals, students, party and government officials, and the military. Carl Riskin is concerned with the economic effects of the revolution, taking up production trends in agriculture and industry, movements in foreign trade, and implications of Masoist economic policies for China's economic growth. Robert A. Scalapino turns to China's foreign policy behavior during this period, arguing that Chinese Communists in general, and Mao in particular, formed foreign policy with a curious combination of cosmic, utopian internationalism and practical ethnocentrism rooted both in Chinese tradition and Communist experience. Ezra F. Vogel closes the volume by exploring the structure of the conflict, the struggles between factions, and the character of those factions.

This graphic novel traces the development of the modern Chinese state while the author chronicles the trials and tribulations of the Chinese everyman as he embraces the new order in childhood, serves in the military and with agricultural labor, and becomes a member of the Communist Party.