Product Description
Zi-ping Luo was 16 years old when the Grand Cultural Revolution slammed schools shut, imprisoned intellectuals, and attempted to destroy thousands of years of civilization. An entire generation which has now come into power, went without education and spent its days idle. Teenagers with politically powerful families took control of schools and neighborhoods, and children exposed their parents' activities to local authorities. The country was given over to a band of hoodlums called the Red Guards, and Shanghai, for many, became a war zone.
This is the extraordinary story of a country gone mad and a young woman's struggle to keep what was left of her family alive and together and to continue the education they were being denied. Though the Luos fought ardently for the Communist Revolution in 1949, the Cultural Revolution branded them anti-Revolutionary intellectuals, and Zi-ping's mother was imprisoned. Red Guard raids, beatings, public humiliations, & all-night searches became routine events. During the first few weeks of the Cultural Revolution, the constant shower of glass and rocks forced Zi-ping and her 2 younger brothers to eat their meals under blankets.
As the years worn on, China's youth stagnated, but the Luo children resolved to educate themselves. Textbooks were copied by hand clandestinely, placed in hidden pockets, and stashed in the houses of friends all over Shanghai. At the risk of imprisonment, some of China's best-known intellectuals taught Zi-ping physics, chemistry, and Western languages and literature in dim attics guarded by other children. When the universities reopened in the mid-1970's, she was admitted directly into a graduate chemistry program. Luo came to Princeton in 1980 on a full fellowship.
A GENERATION LOST is a rare look at China during the 1960's and 1970's, including preparations for & widespread repercussions from Nixon's visit, & the earliest student demonstrations, which set the stage for the subsequent uprisings.
