Fifth Avenue Forum

Life and Death in Shanghai is an autobiography published in November 1987 by Yao Nien-Yuan under the pen name Nien Cheng. Written in exile in the United States, it tells the story of Cheng's arrest during the first days of the Cultural Revolution, her more than six years' confinement, release, persecution, efforts to leave China, and early life in exile.

I've been reading The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy by Michael Lewis this week. It's about the 2016 Trump Transition Team. Man, it's a good comedy now that this is all over. *whew*

Starting this tonight

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_an ... n_Shanghai

Life and Death in Shanghai is an autobiography published in November 1987 by Yao Nien-Yuan under the pen name Nien Cheng. Written in exile in the United States, it tells the story of Cheng's arrest during the first days of the Cultural Revolution, her more than six years' confinement, release, persecution, efforts to leave China, and early life in exile.

Liang Heng was born in Changsha, Hunan Province. He was the sole son born to a reporter and a police bureaucrat. At first he and his two elder sisters were assured a place in China's communist system - their parents were well placed, and all were fervent believers in Mao Zedong, also known as Mao Tse-tung. The Liangs' fortunes turned during the Hundred Flowers Campaign. At the outset of the campaign, loyal communists were encouraged to find faults in the existing regime, in an effort to purify communism. Unfortunately for those involved, the campaign was quickly replaced with an "anti-rightist" campaign leading in an opposite direction of the Hundred Flowers Campaign. This new campaign targeted as enemies many who had criticized the party in compliance with the Hundred Flowers Campaign - a group that included Liang Heng's mother, who was banished from her lofty position and sent to a re-education camp. Liang Heng's father reluctantly separated from his now disgraced wife in order to spare his family the "black mark" of having a "rightist" mother. The effort proved wasted, as the family bore the brunt of the nation's growing revolutionary fervor. Liang Heng's father was labeled a counter-revolutionary intellectual, and he himself a "stinking intellectual's son".

Despite the family's hope to stay together, the Cultural Revolution saw them banished to distant corners of China. Heng stayed with his father, who remained a stalwart believer in Mao, even as they (and many like them) were forced to leave their privileged lives as city dwellers to become country peasants. In Son of the Revolution, Liang chronicled his participation in a Changsha street gang when his parents were sent to cadre schools.[3] Eventually, the fervor of the cultural revolution lead to outright warfare between competing cadres using weapons they didn't understand.

Eventually, the fighting came to an end, leaving the Chinese in an uneasy peace. Rather than revolutionary zeal, an older Liang Heng found a new danger in China's bribery economy. He became a factory worker and then a star basketball player. When China signaled that it would reopen schools, Liang Heng jumped at the chance for a university education.

I am starting this today...looking forward to it.

American **** Prometheus

Ten thousand doors of January was fantastic, will seek out her other books.

Nomadland surprised the hell out of me. Very interesting stuff. I really loved this book.

Currently reading the adventures of buckaroo banzai across the eighth dimension in preparation for the sequel coming out this year. It's been a while since I've seen the movie, but the book is awesome and like the movie, very weird.