No Tears For Mao - Hardcover

Niu-Niu

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0897334108 ISBN 13: 9780897334105

Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2004

Synopsis

Niu-Niu (NOO-Noo) was four years old when, amidst the rubble of charred books and tattered curtains that had been her comfortable "bourgeois" home, she watched the mindless beating of her helpless parents, and saw them, bloody and with shaven heads, taken away for what seemed like forever. That traumatic day marked the end of Niu-Niu's innocent childhood. Two days after she was born, on May 16, 1966, Mao Zedung began his "Great Cultural Revolution," which caused untold suffering. Niu-Niu's "intellectual" family was among the tens of thousands of Chinese people cruelly persecuted and even murdered in the name of the "Social Revolution." For the next nine years, Niu-Niu's life became a nightmare in which human kindness and reason all but disappeared, where violence and hunger were the order of the day. Even after the end of the Cultural Revolution, when Niu-Niu attended university in Beijing, she found Chinese society rigid, puritanical and small-minded. This direct eyewitness account of one of the world's most shocking social upheavals is told vividly and compassionately. It is a chronicle readers will not forget.

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Reviews

Red Guards called her grandfather an enemy of the people and beat him to death; her parents were sent into rural exile for reeducation; as a youngster, Niu-Niu was branded a child of criminals and reduced to poverty. The early part of her memoir consists of powerful vignettes recalling what it was like to live in a society where laughter and tears were officially regulated, kindness toward a 10-year-old "counterrevolutionary" was a serious crime, where the self-righteous urge to punish others for political incorrectness spread like cancer. The latter chapters are disappointing, however. As a student at Beijing University, Niu-Niu seemed determined to live up to her name, which can be translated "Ill-Natured" or "Sour-puss," and to be "without love, without hope, and without decency." Part of this attitude revolved around her relationships with "oversexed foreign demons," who included a hapless American from whom she extorted money. And none of it has much to do with the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution. Niu-Niu's account of her post-childhood experiences-she bragged to a friend during this period that she was "a slut"-is lacking in focus and not detailed enough to satisfy prurient curiosity. The author now lives in France. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Cultural Revolution, launched by the Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966, was a disastrous period in modern Chinese history. This shocking decade left many Chinese, especially the "intellectuals," with haunting memories. Quite a few recent autobiographies have covered this territory (e.g., Zhai Zhenhua's Red Flower of China, LJ 4/15/93; Anchee Min's Red Azalea, LJ 12/93). Unlike the other memoirists, who were usually adults or teenagers at the time and had personally participated in the Revolution, Niu-Niu was born ten days after it began. As a result, she is not so much concerned with an accurate portrayal of this period as she is with what she felt as a child and the affect of the Revolution upon her growing up. Her account, first published in France, is passionate testimony told in simple yet vivid language. An overwhelming pathos is conveyed through the innocent tone of a child. For public libraries.
Mark Meng, St. John's Univ. Lib., New York
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Another wonderful-horrible story emerges from behind the bamboo curtain to show just how inhumane and brutal Mao's Cultural Revolution really was. As a toddler, Niu-Niu watched her house be destroyed, her parents--deemed criminals by the state--be dragged away and imprisoned, and her grandfather be beaten to death by the Red Guard. For eight years she lived with her grandmother, gathering trash, making matchbooks, and stealing to survive. She endured ostracism, humiliation, hunger, and extreme poverty all because of her parents' alleged criminal activities. Now an actress and filmmaker in France, Niu-Niu tells her story in a child's voice, which makes the events seem even more powerful and immediate. She is not only an engaging storyteller with an almost unbelievable tale; she also has a fine sense of pacing. She has written the book as a series of short chapters, a structure that makes it read effortlessly. Her account should take its place as one of the finer examples of the growing number of life-under-Mao testimonies. Mary Ellen Sullivan

Edition details

• Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0897334108
• ISBN 13: 9780897334105
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288