Rating: 
Summary: High marks for this story of survival and hope.
Review: "Life and Death in Shanghai" is the story of a survivor! In her simply told tale, Nien Cheng allows the reader to experience the nightmare of her life in Shanghai throughout the turbulent years of the 1960s and 70s. All passion seems wrung out of Cheng as she relates her story. It is this matter-of-fact presentation that makes one realize that it is precisely this lack of emotion that allowed her to survive not only 6 1/2 years in No.1 Detention House, but also her so-called "freedom" in Shanghai throughout the mid- to late-70s. She is inspirational because a lesson she teaches is to conserve passion and energy by concentrating on a goal. She survives prison because she focused on intelligent discussion of reasons why she was imprisoned. She survived Shanghai because she focused on learining about her daughter's death. She would not allow anything else to interfere with her goals. Physical and mental fortitude allowed her to survive prison, the death of her beloved daughter, faithless friends, traitorous neighbors, and turbulent times. People like Nien Cheng are a tribute to the human spirit and an inspiration to the rest of us.
Rating: 
Summary: A magnificent, powerful & uplifting read.
Review: I took this book with me on holidays to Corsica feeling that perhaps it was not really that suitable. However from page 1 it is gripping; it has all the elements of normal holiday reading in pace and drama but obviously goes much further given its historical and real-life human context. The biggest compliment I can give is that never has a book made be so desirous to meet its author. Nien Cheng is a tremendous example to all of us whether in situations of torment or not. Read this book, it is brilliant
Rating:
Summary: Hope, it sustains life.
Review: Life and Death in Shanghai paints a horrific picture of China during the cultural Revolution. Any book portraying the deaths of so many innocent people is disturbing. Perhaps what gives the book its ultimate potency is that Nien Cheng writes from experience. Her characters are more than real. We are saddened by the death of her daughter, but at the same time, her fight for survival, her will to live gives us courage to keep to our hopes and to look towards the future. This autobiography stresses on the importance of hope. One catch is that some parts get too "historical" and slow down the pace of the novel, so much so that at the end, you feel you have accomplished great feats
Rating:
Summary: Read this before you land on a desert island.
Review: Nien Cheng transported me to a destination I never want to visit. Still, her ability to glimpse hope and cling to it and to, somehow, create life sustaining games to keep her mind active and her survivalist attitude strong mesmerized me. I kept reading this thick book about a horrific experience because she demonstrated what strength of character and postive thinking can achieve
Rating:
Summary: An amazing read!
Review: Nien Cheng's "Life and Death in Shanghai" is a personal account of a woman's life during the cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong in china. In 1966, a group of Red Guards breaks into her house and takes Nien Cheng captive, under the notion that she is a "spy" for the imperialists. For siz years, she remains in prison. The story focuses on those years and how she dealt with herself and her captors.The most amazing part of this book is that, even under the pressure of countless interrogations and relentless accusations, Cheng does not confess and does not lie. "The more logical and intelligent course was to face persecution no matter what I might have to endure," says Cheng. Even after six years of torture, Mrs. Cheng still stays strong, and it is only because of her strength and determination (and maybe even stubbornness) that she is able to survive. One might read this book not only for historical analysis of the time period, but for some sort of insight as to what it was actually like to be in this woman's shoes, or just to be living in such a paranoid society. "Determined to find fault, the Revolutionaries refused to see virtue." It didn't matter whether or not one actually committed a crime--it merely mattered whether one was thought to have committed a crime. Nien Cheng pulls the reader into her story through her vivid descriptions and heart-wrenching discourses. One cannot help to sympathize with this woman and after reading her story, it almost feels like one could know what it was like to be in her position. It's a frightening thought, but that is what makes the story so absorbing.
Rating:
Summary: A very determined Chinese lady
Review: I first travelled to Shanghai in 1984. Some time after returning to Canada, I was in a bookstore and seeing this book, I found its title intriguing, bought it and read it. Well, I just re-read it and it's as striking the second time around. One question pre-occupied me: How did this woman have the courage to stand up to all that madness?
The book is in the first person and one suspects that Nien Cheng had a precise way of putting flowers in a vase in her receiving room. Was she a snob? Was she an egotist? Before her arrest, she lived well and she seemed perfectly comfortable supervising a household of servants. Later, she apparently lived well because of foreign bank accounts. So, snob? She was at pains to claim otherwise, preferring people of whatever background as long as they were honest. Egotist? Perhaps. She was certain of her own rightness.
All "progressive" people in North America should read this book. The Revolutionary Guards who imprisoned and interrogated Nien Cheng viewed her as "rich" and wanted to "reform" her. Truly progressive or otherwise, the book's value is greater than its indictment of the mindset underneath the Cultural Revolution. At any moment, her tormentors could have simply thrown her out of a window and claimed that she had commit suicide. I don't know how she managed to stand up to them but I suspect that she knew that she was in her country, amongst her people, and what was happening was wrong. Her courage was an affair of conviction, guile and genuine solidarity. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A Terrific Story well written
Review: This book is a great read and provides good insight into the insanity that gripped China during the Moa Se Tung era. Highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: When table manners can be held against you
Review: I read this book many years ago and what remains after all these years is that the author was advised by her jailers that she was prolonging her prison term because she maintained her table manners whilst in prison - an indication that she wasn't down to earth. Growing up, I had heard stories about how jealous and spiteful neighbors took the opportunity to avenge their insecurities on people who made them feel guilty about themselves and I witnessed people with criminal agendas accusing others of thinking they were better than others because they knew that was an effective trigger to invite the worst in human nature from third parties. This is a bad sign anywhere and everywhere in the world when good behavior is punished instead of promoted and emulated. I think that sometimes stress is evident in the way someone chomps aggressively when otherwise they seem mild and "modest." Now would anyone be angry at seeing a calmer chewer because of the evil thought/attitude crime of a secret sense of superiority or are they upset at the flash of insight of what is not available to them and knowing the cause of the loss. I think that China remains a country whose people are in an enormous amount of pain and are genuinely in desperate straits not just poverty-wise but emotionally too and it does not help that the Mainlanders are perceived as handling those years of deprivation and have emerged unscathed. That's not possible. My last Chinese teacher told me that every single adult and child including himself suffers from depression and each individual needs a team of therapists. That's not going to happen.
Nien Cheng is one of the Chinese before this current majority overwhelms and corrects our perception of what are "real Chinese" as the Mainlanders are wont to declare themselves. I'm not saying that Mainlanders are bad or dirty, many have a right to feel inferior to no one. But it's ok to say that some things are not ok otherwise the behavior stemming from being troubled and damaged and lack of reflection about what was stolen from them by fellow Chinese as well as by foreigners is going to be perpetuated and it's going to cost everyone not just Mainlanders. I understand the point of pride of not discussing the damage done and just getting on and managing as well as one can but for Chinese to indulge their porcelain tastes and not have this happen again or to make it less likely to reoccur and to combat wilful condescending misinterpretation requires some grasp of the gutter-level aspects of history.
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