While the United States may be one of the youngest nations and cultures in the world and sometimes derided for its political pendulum swings, China is definitely one of the oldest. In its long, arduous history, it has had many political and cultural upheavals that surpass what the US has gone through in its brief 200 years. Because China has so often been a closed society, however, it is rare when one of her citizens has had a chance to document and discuss living through one of these periods in history. The Cultural Revolution that took place in China in the late 1960s and early 1970s is arguably the most tumultuous time in China's recent history, yet in Life and Death in Shanghai (1986), Nien Cheng documents not only her survival, but eventual triumph. This paper will briefly review and discuss the account she gives of her life in her autobiography, Life and Death in Shanghai.
As the book opens, Nien Cheng discusses her life in Communist China before the Cultural Revolution. While she and her husband had been part of the "enemy class" (middle and upper classes, capitalists and landowners) and her husband had even been part of the Kuomintang government, they both wanted to live in an egalitarian society where all citizens would be clothed and fed. They, along with other intellectuals in Chinese society, believed that a communist society would help accomplish this momentous task, so they chose to remain behind in Shanghai when the Communists came, rather than flee to Taiwan with the other officials in the Kuomintang government (23). Cheng's husband was then offered a job as a manager and liaison to the Chinese government for Shell Corporation, the only international corporation to choose to remain in China. When he passed away in 1957, Nien Cheng became assistant to the manager and also operated as liaison, making sure that everything ran smoothly between the corporation and the government (5).
From 1949 on, Cheng and her h...