The secret listener : an ingenue in Mao's court / Yuan-Tsung Chen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chen, Yuan-tsung, 1932- author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women authors, Chinese--20th century--Biography.

Women authors, Chinese.

Chen, Yuan-tsung, 1932-.

Chen, Yuan-tsung.

China--Politics and government--1949-1976.

China.

China--Social conditions--1949-1976.

Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976.

Mao, Zedong.

Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976.

Zhou, Enlai.

Women--China--History--20th century.

Women.

Genre:

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (277 pages) : illustrations (black and white, and colour)

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022]

Summary:

"A personal account of life in the orbit of Mao and Zhao En-Lai and one woman's effort to tell what it was like to be at the center of the storm. The history of China in the twentieth century is comprised of a long series of shocks: the 1911 revolution, the civil war between the communists and the nationalists, the Japanese invasion, the revolution, the various catastrophic campaigns initiated by Chairman Mao between 1949 and 1976, its great opening to the world under Deng, and the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Yuan-tsung Chen, who is now 90, lived through most of it, and at certain points in close proximity to the seat of communist power. Born in Shanghai in 1929, she came to know Zhou En-Lai--second only to Mao in importance--as a young girl while living in Chongqing, where Chiang Kai-Shek's government had relocated to, during the war against Japan. That connection to Zhou helped her save her husband's life in Cultural Revolution. After the communists took power, she obtained a job in one of the culture ministries. While there, she frequently engaged with the upper echelon of the party and was a first-hand witness to some of the purges that the regime regularly initiated. Eventually, the commissar she worked under was denounced in 1957, and she barely escaped being purged herself. Later, during Cultural Revolution, she and her husband were purged and sent to live in a rough, poor area. She and her husband finally moved to Hong Kong, with Zhou's special permission, in 1971. A first-hand account of what life was like in the period before the revolution and in Mao's China, The Secret Listener gives a unique perspective on the era, and Chen's vantage point provides us with a new perspective on the Maoist regime--one of the most radical political experiments in modern history and a force that genuinely changed the world."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

My Family and Myself

My First Affair

My Perilous Girlhood

Stumbling into a Larger World

Breaking Away

In Mao's Beijing

Outside the Great Wall, by the Blue Danube

I Felt It Was Me on Trial

A Purge in Reverse

The Reverse of the Reverse: The Anti-Rightist Campaign

From the Magic Circle into the Great Famine

A VIP (Very Important Pig)

From Black Market to Fake Bumper Harvest

Between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution

The Mob Rule

The Mob Rule Continued

Intrigues in a Slum House

Forced into Exile and Fighting Back.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Includes index.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Chen, Yuan-Tsung The Secret Listener

ISBN:

0-19-757337-1

0-19-757336-3

OCLC:

1285780730