Synopsis
Han Wei T'ien, a man who spent twenty-six years in the prison camps of Communist China, recalls spending two years down a well, mass executions in the Tilan prison, and braving temperatures as low as fifty degrees below zero.
Reviews
In this extraordinary book the distinguished Chinese author Pu Ning relates the story of one man's imprisonment in Red China's "labor correction" system between 1951 and 1976. Han Wei-tien, arrested as a suspected Nationalist spy, was a laborer on the construction of the Chinghai-to-Tibet road under conditions so harsh that Pu Ning estimates the project "resulted in more senseless deaths than did the construction of the Egyptian pyramids." Senseless death is the focus of this blood-drenched narrative, a record of wanton cruelty on a breathtaking scale. Han's worst ordeal, described in wrenching detail, was a year-and-a-half's confinement at the bottom of a dry well. But then a miracle occurred: a nomadic Tibetan fell in love with Han and, despite her knowledge that he was a convict, entered into a long affair with him and saved him from starvation and freezing on several occasions. Han now lives in Taiwan.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Noted Chinese novelist Pu Ning recounts in the first person the harrowing trials of Han Wei-tien, arrested in 1951 on charges that he spied for Chiang Kai-shek. At first Han merely seems to be going mad in prison. He begins digging in the floor of his cell with his bare hands and over a few years carves out a cavelike dwelling and takes up residence underground. After two years, near dead and with a case of sudden blindness, he is transferred to a hospital and then sent to Shanghai's Tilan Bridge Jail, the largest in Asia. His description of the strict rules there (``No tˆte-…-tˆtes and no gestures of any sort'') and the overcrowded conditions are chilling. Collective shootings take place regularly, leaving the prison courtyard awash in blood. As part of a ``Labor Correction Team'' assigned to construct a road between China and Tibet, Han Wei-tien sees many deaths and watches as other prisoners disintegrate emotionally. At one point he muses about how the opening words of the Internationale, ``Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!'' apply to his group. He also discusses the strategies taken with regard to clothing and food. This flood of information is related in a formal language that keeps readers removed from the events, but humanity breaks through when Han meets a Tibetan woman named Yelusa and falls in love. An important social document, though not consistently successful as a piece of literature. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Himself imprisoned for short periods of time and under constant surveillance by the Chinese Comunists, Pu is well qualified to tell the story of Han Wei T'ien, a military official working for the Nationalists, who was captured by the Communists in 1951 and imprisoned for 26 years. The two meant in Taiwan where both had immigrated. Pu wrote this book to remind the public that the most recent crackdown on prodemocracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square is characteristic of the Chinese Communist regime. In narrating Han's story, he focuses on how political prisoners are used as slaves in labor camps. Absent is a description of "thought reform" campaigns, which probably have been overanalyzed by Western China scholars anyway; but the political context within which the Chinese Communist Party came to power should have been covered in some fashion. Nonetheless, Han's story is compelling and heart-wrenching. For another account of the Chinese labor camps, see Harry Wu's Bitter Winds , LJ 1/94.--Ed.
- Peggy Spitzer Christoff, Oak Park, Ill .
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Stories of Maoist China continue to paint an increasingly horrifying picture. The story acclaimed Chinese writer Pu Ning (a pseudonymn that translates as "Mr. Anonymous") tells of Han Wei T'ien is a 10 on any scale of horrors. Arrested as a spy, Han spent nearly 30 years in prisons or in "reform through labor." He was dropped into a 60-foot-deep well, 6 feet in diameter, and left there for two years, during which he went blind for lack of sunlight and became debilitated for lack of nourishment. Starvation threatened when, in a work gang building a road through one of the most desolate stretches of Asia, he and his fellows labored dawn to dusk, also suffering severe exposure. He was held in prisons so overcrowded that there were six men to a cell and in others in which mass executions occurred regularly. At last released, Han emigrated to Taiwan, where he met Pu Ning and impressed him with his inner and outer strength. His story demonstrates, along with the horrors of Communist China, the extraordinary resiliency of the human spirit. Mary Ellen Sullivan
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