Book summary “Life and death in Shanghai”: summary

Introduction

You often wonder how ordinary citizens maintain their humanity when a stable society suddenly erupts into fanatical political violence. Nien Cheng's memoir provides a strictly factual account of personal survival during China's Cultural Revolution. As an affluent adviser to Shell in Shanghai, you watch your privileged lifestyle abruptly collide with mass political mobilization.

A personal chronicle of survival, intellectual resistance, and human dignity during the brutal turmoil of China's Cultural Revolution.

The book guides you through eight distinct phases of political persecution. You witness initial witch-hunts and destructive Red Guard raids, endure six and a half years of solitary confinement, and finally navigate release, emigration, and your search for truth regarding your daughter's death.

You will discover answers to several critical questions as you read:

• How did affluent citizens maintain traditional lifestyles before political violence escalated?
• What methods did interrogators use to extract false confessions from innocent prisoners?
• How did the arrest of the Gang of Four change China's political landscape?

1. Oasis of Comfort Before the Storm

Seventeen years after the Communist army entered Shanghai in 1949, you might still find isolated pockets of traditional elegance. In a city of 10 million, perhaps only a dozen families preserved their old lifestyle.

Some wealthy families managed to preserve their old lifestyle and homes seventeen years after the Communist takeover.

Nien Cheng maintained a comfortable home and employed a domestic staff because she had the means. The Shanghai municipal government treated her with courtesy through its United Front Organization. The Party did not explicitly decree how people should live, and initially forbade discharging domestic staff to avoid worsening unemployment.

Nien Cheng lived with her daughter and servants Lao-zhao and Chen-ma. After her husband died of cancer in 1957, she became adviser to management at Shell. Foreign commercial firms operating in China eventually closed their offices and negotiated agreements to transfer their staff to government control.

Shell International Petroleum Company, along with a few other British firms like Imperial Chemical Industries, Hong Kong-Shanghai Banking Corporation, and Jardines, maintained an office in Shanghai until closing it in 1966.

In the spring of 1966, Shell closed its Shanghai office after negotiating an Assets against Liability Agreement with a Chinese government agency. While the company's assets were handed over and staff were absorbed by the government with promises of employment and pensions, management members like Nien Cheng were excluded from the agreement.

Political movements in China were systematically preceded by vehement propaganda articles designed to mobilize the public and signal upcoming targets. Nien Cheng read vehement denunciation articles spread across her desk on the night of July 3, 1966, unaware they signaled the impending destruction of normal life.

2. Rise of the Red Guards

Mao Zedong triggered the Cultural Revolution through a fierce power struggle over economic policies. He accused Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping of protecting the capitalist class. Mao secured control through Defense Minister Lin Biao and armed forces, empowering Jiang Qing.

Mao mobilized young Red Guards to destroy traditional culture and enforce ideological purity through widespread vandalism, public humiliation, and looting.

Armed with official recognition after Mao reviewed them on August 18 in Beijing, young people formed the Red Guards to attack the capitalist class. They renamed streets, destroyed traditional shops, confiscated luxury goods or western-style clothing, and publicly humiliated targeted citizens.

Red Guards seized citizens on the streets to cut off narrow trousers, pointed-toe shoes, or permanent-wave hairstyles, and destroyed temples like the one at Jing An Si.

Intellectuals with foreign ties faced intense persecution. Li Zhen, head of the piano department at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and former student in England, committed suicide by gas after Red Guards made her crawl under a four-foot pole placed across the gate to demonstrate she was a running dog of British imperialists.

Anticipating the ransacking of private homes, you withdrew cash from bank deposits to distribute severance funds to loyal servants before the Red Guards arrived. You withdrew a lesser sum of 6,000 yuan, leaving a larger sum of 20,000 yuan renewed for another year. You placed 400 yuan in an envelope for the part-time gardener and refused offers from staff to hide your jewelry, keeping them safe from political trouble.

Mr. Hu, former owner of a paint factory and chief engineer who started his business in 1930 and handed it over in 1956 with fifteen hundred workers, asked the Party secretary to assign him to work as an ordinary coolie pushing raw material drums and carting coal to avoid jealousy or accusations of sabotage during political campaigns.

• Never make a false confession no matter how great the pressure is.
• Be firm and polite during questioning without offending officials.
• Refuse to make up any story to satisfy inquisitors.
• Withdraw funds from bank fixed deposits prior to total disruption to cover living expenses.
• Distribute financial support to loyal household staff before the arrival of raiders.

3. Looting and House Arrest

Red Guards subjected private homes to destructive raids and public humiliations while courageous domestic staff demonstrated loyalty under extreme duress.

On August 30, a group of thirty or forty high school Red Guards accompanied by older teachers invaded Cheng's house. They smashed furniture, mirrors, and porcelain collections, burned books in a bonfire on the lawn, and searched for hidden wealth, driven by the ideological belief that old culture must be destroyed to make way for socialism.

A young Red Guard stepped on a set of rare Kangxi winecups, and another smashed a mirror over a Kangxi vase, while others threw books onto a bonfire in the garden.

Ancient porcelain pieces, traditional ink-and-brush paintings, and antique jade ornaments were targeted as useless toys of the feudal emperors and capitalist class. Cheng attempted to save her antique winecups and a Ming dynasty Guanyin figure by arguing they were products of ancient workers' labor rather than capitalists, though many items were already smashed. A Red Guard carried a priceless seventeenth-century Ming carved blanc de chine Goddess of Mercy (Guanyin) by Chen Wei to throw into the trash.

Cheng convinced the teacher and Red Guards to preserve her porcelain collection by suggesting it could be sold on the world market in Hong Kong to finance world revolution. A municipal liaison officer visited Cheng's house, inspected the situation, and instructed the Red Guards to allow her and her daughter each a suitcase of clothing and a canvas bag of bedding.

You will find that extreme trauma and the sudden loss of all material possessions can be managed through emotional detachment. Cheng recalled losing all her possessions in Chongqing in the summer of 1941 when a bomb destroyed her home just before moving to Canberra for diplomatic service.

Lao-zhao brought the Shanghai Liberation Daily featuring the People's Daily lead article, which caused officials in the municipal government to become paralyzed with fear and authorize massive bonus payments that exhausted local bank reserves. Peasants came into Shanghai in large numbers and demanded free food and service from frightened hotel managers after answering Chairman Mao's call. Lao-zhao refused to leave, stating that as the son of a poor peasant and a party member, he was true proletariat and needed to stay to buy food for Cheng.

Meiping was removed from the masses and placed in the film studio cowshed to write self-criticisms because of her family background.

• Drink water and eat regular meals to maintain physical energy.
• Refuse to surrender mentally by adopting a resolute, granite-like attitude against abuse.

4. Solitary Confinement and Interrogation

Detention facilities operated on a presumption of guilt with strict quotas, using rigorous interrogation rooms and psychological pressure to extract false confessions.

Mao Zedong declared that 3 to 5 percent of the population were enemies of socialism. Organizations in every sector had to find that exact percentage of people guilty of political crimes during each political movement. Nien Cheng is imprisoned in the No. 1 Detention House simply because she dared to live well and possessed the wrong class origins.

Upon entering the detention house, you are stripped, thoroughly searched, assigned a number instead of a name, photographed, and forced to memorize prison regulations. Cheng is assigned the number eighteen-oh-six and ordered to memorize prison rules.

Guards reject the existence of lawbooks, considering them capitalist. They rely entirely on the arbitrary and shifting words of the supreme leader to establish guilt. You must study the books of Chairman Mao daily to seek reform of your thinking.

• Study the books of Mao Zedong daily to seek reform of thinking.
• Confess crimes without reservation and denounce others involved.
• Report to the guards any infringement of prison rules by cellmates.

Cheng reads the Shanghai Liberation Daily carefully between the lines while imprisoned, but notes that real news is acquired through footpath news passed in low whispers among the ten million people of Shanghai. You must learn to read between the lines of official newspapers and pay attention to omissions.

• Read between the lines of official newspapers and pay attention to omissions.
• Evaluate political developments through the tone of editorials and selected quotations.

Cheng borrows a broom, washes her cell, uses rice paste to cover dirty walls with toilet paper, sews towels and eyeshades, and studies Mao's collected works to maintain her composure.

• Request cleaning tools like a broom and water to clean and sanitize living quarters.
• Use available materials like rice paste and paper to cover repulsive surfaces.
• Engage in soothing practical tasks such as sewing to improve daily life.

Political prisons use formal interrogation rooms designed for intimidation, where prisoners are forced to recite Maoist quotations and face unseen monitors.

Cheng is led to an interrogation room in the Number One Detention House after nearly two months in her cell. Two officials demand she read a Chairman Mao quotation while an unseen listener monitors from a small window in the back wall. The interrogator claims a woman like Cheng would not last five years in the unheated prison conditions.

The interrogator explicitly states that justice is an abstract, class-based concept meant to serve whichever class holds power. When Cheng submits a concise chronological record of her life, the interrogator rejects it as a mere statistical account and accuses her of trying to hide her true political background.

• Write an autobiography in chronological order starting with family background.
• Do not try to whitewash yourself or hide anything.
• Do not make a draft or throw away paper with mistakes, but hand it in with the rest.

The interrogator accuses Cheng of engaging in political espionage through her frequent social meetings with a British diplomatic officer named Scott, whom she first met at a dinner party in 1961. Cheng also introduced a traditional Chinese medicine doctor to a British woman named Mrs. Austin in 1960, and after the Red Guards targeted the doctor for these foreign contacts, he committed suicide.

Cheng observes a tiny spider spinning a cocoon-like web in her cell, drawing inspiration from its instinct for survival to face her interrogation with renewed determination.

• Watch out for constant surveillance by guards peering through the cell door peephole.
• Maintain a calm and normal outward expression to prevent guards from interpreting agitation as guilt.
• Engage in daily quiet prayer or mental grounding to preserve inner peace.

5. Military Control and Factional Struggles

The January Revolution brought military control and rigid prison discipline while high-level factional power struggles among Maoist leaders continued to reshape the political landscape.

Former security chief Wang Hongwen united mass revolutionary organizations into the Shanghai Workers Revolutionary Headquarters, backed by Zhang Chunqiao and Jiang Qing. On January 4, they overthrew the municipal government and Party Secretariat.

Military control officials replaced the regular prison guards, cut food rations to 2 meals a day to conserve grain, and instituted constant loudspeaker broadcasts of revolutionary slogans. A military control officer read out lists of prisoners sentenced to immediate execution for failing to confess. Intellectuals and professionals were officially labeled as the stinking ninth category alongside traditional class enemies.

Young, politically reliable soldiers without proper medical training were appointed as doctors and technicians based on ideological loyalty. When you were transferred to Tilanqiao prison hospital, you found the waiting room filled with emaciated inmates and dying patients on stretchers. Over twenty thousand men and women labored in the various workshops of Tilanqiao prison.

Liu Shaoqi was publicly denounced as a traitor, hidden agent, and scab by a Central Committee resolution and stripped of all official positions. Mao Zedong sent a basket of mangoes, received from Pakistan's foreign minister, to workers and peasants at Qinghua University to signal a shift in political favor.

Prison authorities placed you with a woman who feigned severe distress and expressed extreme hatred for the Communist Party while praising the Kuomintang. A cellmate who tried to entice you into praising the Kuomintang was later announced over the loudspeaker as having been executed as a spy, though she was actually kept alive in the facility.

You faced an interrogation panel of five men who insisted your trips to Europe in 1956 and 1957 were meant to receive instructions from British intelligence organizations.

• Devise a series of exercises moving every part of the body from head to toes twice a day.
• Use mental exercises like memorizing or recalling poetry to preserve mental faculties.
• Demand concrete facts and physical evidence for any accusations.
• Insist on written documentation of innocence and formal public apologies upon exoneration.

6. Persecution Continued and Physical Torture

Interrogators escalated psychological abuse and physical torture through heavy brass handcuffs while fabricating compromising histories for intellectuals and relatives.

You faced an interrogation regarding your social circle that lasted nearly seven months until late 1969. The sessions then stopped entirely, leaving you waiting without explanation. Shortages affected both prisoners and guards, reducing rations of soap, rice, and meat. Soap was strictly rationed to one cake per month per person.

Guards applied thick, square-edged brass handcuffs tightly behind your back and refused to remove them until you agreed to confess. You were forced to wear heavy brass handcuffs behind your back for eleven days, resulting in deep wounds, blood, pus, and temporary loss of sensation in your hands.

To survive extreme confinement, you devised methods to eat and dry bandages.

• Spread a clean face towel on the table to catch food when hands are immobilized behind the back.
• Use a plastic spoon to dig sticky rice out of the aluminum container onto the towel.
• Bend over the table to eat the food directly from the towel like an animal when hands cannot lift food to the mouth.
• Wrap wet bandages around the outside of a hot water mug to dry them quickly.
• Roll bandages in a towel to extract excess moisture before leaving them to dry.

Mao used the establishment of relations with Canada and the reception of American writer Edgar Snow to signal readiness for rapprochement with the United States on the condition of abandoning Taiwan. Beijing reached an agreement with Canada to establish full diplomatic relations based on five principles while Canada severed ties with the Kuomintang government on Taiwan.

7. Release and Search for the Truth

Following six and a half years of imprisonment, Nien Cheng was released without formal charges and initiated a dangerous quest to uncover the truth about her daughter's tragic death.

On March 27, 1973, authorities informed Nien Cheng she was being freed as an act of proletarian magnanimity without facing formal charges. She strongly rejected the official document stating she was released due to showing repentance, demanding instead a declaration of innocence and an apology.

When the detention house returned her belongings, she received the winter clothing that the Red Guards had allowed her daughter Meiping to keep in 1966. Because the garments looked brand new and unused, she became convinced that her daughter had died shortly after her own arrest.

Representatives of the Revolutionary Committee of the Shanghai Film Studio later officially notified Cheng that Meiping jumped from the ninth-floor window of the Shanghai Athletics Association building on June 16, 1967. They maintained that suicide was a counterrevolutionary attempt to resist reeducation, absolving the film studio from investigating the circumstances.

Nien Cheng secretly visited Nanjing Road to inspect the Shanghai Athletics Association building. By observing the actual architecture from the street and alley, she discovered that the ninth-floor windows did not face Nanjing Road as claimed, but instead opened onto a narrow alley with iron bars, making the official suicide story impossible.

Because official laws and regulations were widely disregarded, you could rely on the back-door system to bypass bureaucratic stagnation and obtain urgent services through personal connections:

• Make arrangements through friends or acquaintances rather than going through regular channels.
• Provide presents rather than money to those who make the arrangements.
• Utilize personal connections and favors to secure priority treatment or goods.

Shoppers at public markets deployed broken boxes, old hats, stools, and tin cans to hold places in multiple lines simultaneously. A mutual assistance scheme allowed you to manage several queues at once using these proxy objects.

To build a dividing wall and secure privacy from co-residents, Nien Cheng procured old bricks smuggled down the Suzhou River by boatmen. She utilized a power company truck driver to transport the materials and deployed cigarettes as gifts to secure permits from Housing Bureau officials.

8. Fall of the Gang of Four and Farewell to Shanghai

The arrest of the Gang of Four brought formal rehabilitation and a consumer boom, leading to Cheng's final departure from Shanghai and reflection on China's political trajectory.

On October 6, 1976, the 8341 Regiment stationed at Zhongnanhai arrested Jiang Qing and her associates. Local radicals were sidelined while victims received rehabilitation papers and bank deposits.

You watched a massive consumer spending spree unfold as rehabilitated citizens spent returned funds. The government introduced high-priced imported household appliances and travel services to absorb the cash. Nien Cheng donated 60,000 yuan to the Federation of Women and observed citizens eagerly buying twenty-inch Hitachi television sets for 2,000 yuan.

To leave the country, you had to secure exit permission without running into local labor disputes. You can follow these steps:

• Obtain a formal letter of invitation for family reunion from relatives abroad.
• Ensure no local employment unit can claim you are indispensable to avoid being denied a passport.
• Present required documents including rehabilitation papers and the resident's book at the Public Security Bureau passport office.

On September 20, 1980, Comrade He and five Federation representatives saw Cheng off at the wharf in a Japanese-imported bus. She boarded the ship for Hong Kong, carrying forty-four years without seeing her younger sister and leaving behind the tragic memory of Meiping.

Moving west to Canada and later Washington, D.C., in 1983, you encounter complete freedom of travel and expression. Deng Xiaoping opened the door to the outside world, shifting China into a surplus grain producer by the 1980s. Yet the party pendulum swung again when student demonstrations erupted across thirteen major Chinese cities in December 1986.

10 Key Ideas

1. Nien Cheng's memoir provides a strictly factual account of personal survival during China's Cultural Revolution.
2. Mao mobilized young Red Guards to destroy traditional culture and enforce ideological purity through widespread vandalism, public humiliation, and looting.
3. Red Guards subjected private homes to destructive raids and public humiliations while courageous domestic staff demonstrated loyalty under extreme duress.
4. Detention facilities operated on a presumption of guilt with strict quotas, using rigorous interrogation rooms and psychological pressure to extract false confessions.
5. The January Revolution brought military control and rigid prison discipline while high-level factional power struggles among Maoist leaders continued to reshape the political landscape.
6. Interrogators escalated psychological abuse and physical torture through heavy brass handcuffs while fabricating compromising histories for intellectuals and relatives.
7. Following six and a half years of imprisonment, Nien Cheng was released without formal charges and initiated a dangerous quest to uncover the truth about her daughter's tragic death.
8. Because official laws and regulations were widely disregarded, you could rely on the back-door system to bypass bureaucratic stagnation and obtain urgent services through personal connections.
9. The arrest of the Gang of Four brought formal rehabilitation and a consumer boom, leading to Cheng's final departure from Shanghai and reflection on China's political trajectory.
10. Moving west to Canada and later Washington, D.C., in 1983, you encounter complete freedom of travel and expression, demonstrating the ultimate triumph of human freedom over tyranny.