Nien Cheng

Nien Cheng
Born	January 28, 1915(1915-01-28) Beijing, China
Died	November 2, 2009(2009-11-02) (aged 94) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Nationality	Chinese (American Citizen)
Notable work(s)	Life and Death in Shanghai

Nien Cheng (traditional Chinese: 鄭念; simplified Chinese: 郑念; pinyin: Zhèng Niàn) (born in Beijing on January 28, 1915; died November 2, 2009 in Washington, D.C.) was a Chinese author who recounted her harrowing experiences of the Cultural Revolution in her memoir Life and Death in Shanghai.^[1][2][3] In 1966, she became a target of attack by Red Guards due to her former management of a foreign firm in Shanghai, Shell. Maoist revolutionaries used this fact to claim that Cheng was a British spy in order to strike at Communist Party moderates for allowing the firm to operate in China after 1949.

Her book documents her account of her imprisonment. Cheng endured six-and-a-half years of squalid and inhumane conditions in prison, while refusing to give any false confession. Cheng used Mao's teachings successfully against her interrogators, frequently turning the tide of the struggle sessions against the interrogators. In 1973 Cheng was eventually paroled under on the basis that her attitude had shown improvement. However, Cheng resisted leaving prison without receiving acknowledgment from her captors that she had been unjustly imprisoned.

Upon release Chen was relocated from her spacious home to two bedrooms on the second floor of a two-story building. Cheng continued her life under constant surveillance, including spying by the family on the first floor. When released from jail, Cheng was told that her daughter, Meiping Cheng (Chinese: 郑梅萍; pinyin: Zhèng Méipíng), a prominent Shanghai film actress, had committed suicide. After Cheng conducted a discreet investigation, she found that this scenario was impossible, and came to believe that Meiping had been murdered by Maoists after the young woman refused to denounce her mother. The alleged killer of Meiping, a rebel worker named Yongnian Hu, was arrested and given a suspended death sentence by Shanghai authorities in 1980, but Hu was subsequently paroled in 1995.^[4]

Chen lived in China until 1980, when the political climate warmed enough for her to apply for a visa to the United States to visit family. She never returned, as she was still a constant target of surveillance by those who wished her ill, first emigrating to Canada, and later to Washington, D.C., where she wrote the autobiography.

Nien Cheng was a longtime friend of Nelson T. Johnson, the U.S. Ambassador to China and his wife Jane Augusta Washington Thornton Beck Johnson. After moving to Washington, D.C., Cheng traveled extensively and was a frequent speaker on the lecture circuit. Canadian singer Corey Hart recorded an instrumental song based on her memoir in his 1990 album Bang!

Nien Cheng died of renal failure on November 2, 2009.^[5]

References

1. ^ "A prisoner of the thought police", New York Times, May 31, 1987.
2. ^ Life and Death in Shanghai, Time magazine, February 5, 2007.
3. ^ Review, Los Angeles Times, June 19, 1988.
4. ^ http://www.canyu.org/n10570c10.aspx
5. ^ "Nien Cheng, Telegraph.co.uk, 11 Nov 2009

Persondata
Name	Cheng, Nien
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	January 28, 1915
Place of birth	Beijing, Republic of China
Date of death	November 2, 2009
Place of death	Washington, D.C., U.S.