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Bitter Winds: A Memoir of My Years in China's Gulag
In the powerful tradition of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, Bitter Winds chronicles a brave man's triumph over mindless brutality and unimaginable oppression. On April 27, 1960, Harry Wu, a senior at Beijing's Geology Institute, was arrested by Chinese authorities and, without ever being formally charged or tried, spent the next nineteen years in hellish prison labor camps. Exiled to the bitter desolation of this extensive gulag, he was transformed from a member of China's privileged intellectual elite into a pariah, a faceless cipher denied even the most basic human rights. He was subjected to grinding labor, systematic starvation, and torture, yet he refused to give up his passionate hold on life. From the tough peasants and petty criminals imprisoned with him, like chicken thief Big Mouth Xing, he learned the harsh lessons of survival. Driven by incessant hunger, he became expert at scavenging for edible weeds in the barren camp fields and capturing snakes and frogs in the irrigation ditches. Reduced at one point to a walking skeleton, he took part in elaborate "food imagining" sessions with his squad mates in the barracks at night. In the crucible of the nightmarish Qinghe prison farm, he watched as, night after night, prisoners succumbed to disease and starvation to be buried in unmarked graves outside the camp walls. Throughout this stunning chronicle are moving stories of the prisoners who became Wu's trusted friends. The gentle, lute-playing Ao, unblinking in his insistence on the dignity of humanity, serves as a beacon in the moral abyss of the camps. Handsome and virile Lu, tormented by unfulfilled longing for a woman's touch, is driven to insanity and finallysuicide. Buffeted by the worst horrors of the Chinese communist tragedy, these poignant figures provide a rare, detailed portrait of the depths of human despair. Released from prison in 1979, Harry Wu was eventually allowed to leave China for the United States. But his story doe
316 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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About the author
Harry Wu
12 books13 followersHarry Wu was a Chinese human rights activist. Wu spent 19 years in Chinese labor camps, and later became a resident and citizen of the United States. In 1992, he founded the Laogai Research Foundation.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
June 26, 2017
There's something appealing to me about the bleak and austere. I suppose it is my basically Stoic-Buddhist mindset and its emphasis on daily acknowledgement of life's fleetingness—memento mori. I've been a keen reader of Holocaust histories and memoirs for some time: Primo Levi of course but also Robert Jay Lifton's The Nazi Doctors and Christopher R. Browning's Ordinary Men, which is about the lethal Einsaatsgruppen. In time I moved on to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the Russian Gulag. Now I'm in China in the political reeducation camps. My first excursion here was by way of Nien Cheng's incomparable Life and Death in Shanghai. That book starts in 1966, at the outset of the Mao's notorious Cultural Revolution.
Harry Wu's Bitter Winds starts earlier, during Mao's "Great Leap Forward." Mao was a megalomaniac whose ideological boorishness convulsed his nation causing the deaths of tens of million (Seventy million according to June Chang and Jon Halliday in Mao: The Untold Story.)
The Great Leap Forward was the Soviet-style collectivization of China's agricultural sector which produced the famine of 1958-61. Marxist/Leninist theory always had the profound undergirding of an absolute ignorance of market mechanisms. Of course, these mechanisms function whether one ignores them or not. When Mao and his henchmen ignored them he starved to death, just in this 3-year period, roughly (the figure is real but inexact) 40 million of his own countrymen and women.
Harry Wu was a kid in Catholic school in Shanghai in 1949 when the People's Liberation Army defeated Chang Kai Shek and the Nationalists. Harry's father, a rational person, a banker, who could not imagine the reign of wooden-headed ideologues that were about to descend on his nation, decided to stay when Mao took power. Big mistake. Harry's Catholic teachers, seeing the writing on the wall, fled.
In the interregnum, as the Communists took hold of the reins of power, Harry, a smart kid, read in the Party newspaper about his country's need for geologists to discover the raw materials for China's new industrialist future. He was accepted into a five-year program at a new Beijing institute. But academic work, which Harry was very good at, wasn't what was valued at school. What was valued was mindless reiterations of the Party line.
Harry became caught up in Mao's period of Party self-criticism known to us in the West as the "Hundred Flowers Campaign." ("Let a hundred flowers bloom," wrote the Great Helmsman, "and let a hundred schools of thought contend.") This was a trap to get people to incriminate themselves. Millions were so caught and Harry Wu was among them. He was jailed as a counter-revolutionary rightest. No, I'm not sure what that means either. To the Communists in power however it meant that Harry wasn't ideologically acceptable. It meant he had been born into a banker's family and as such was irrevocably tainted.
We in the West have a hard time understanding the Chinese reverence for family. Suffice it to say that millenia of Confucian familial culture, of ancestor worship, and strict adherence to paternal rule had now given way to an ideology in which family was to be jettisoned. Under Soviet-style Communism, which China was busily adopting, breaking from one's family in order to become a true socialist was encouraged. But even In the Soviet Union—see Orlando Figes's The Whisperers—the strides made in this direction were piecemeal. In China the neural-cultural hardwiring was too great. It was almost impossible for the average Chinese to discard family connections. Thus, individual "crimes" became family crimes. In Harry Wu's case--as in the cases of millions of other unfortunates--his family, his brothers, his sisters, his father, his step-mother-- suffered for Harry's crimes, which we in fact a reaction to his father's "crimes."
Poor Harry had come to adulthood in a setting, religious though it might be, which was based on reason. The Communist Party was not based on reason, and being so young in this new atmosphere of bootlicking ideologues, Harry could not learn to lie quickly enough. Sad to say, but his innocence, his inability to dissemble—Harry had been raised to speak the truth—doomed him. He spent the next 19 years undergoing an utterly stupid program of corrective labor. He almost starved to death a number of times. There are scenes of prisoners dropping like flies from starvation that are almost unbearably moving.
The book is a harrowing read. It was co-written with American Carolyn Wakeman after Harry was released and managed to get away to the U.S. Later he went back with Ed Bradley of CBS's 60 Minutes in order to gather footage for an exposé on China's use of prison labor in the manufacture of export products. What we in the West know today about China's long term use of slave labor we owe to Harry Wu, this book, and his groundbreaking television journalism.
Highly recommended, but grim, not for the faint of heart or those living sheltered lives.
.
Harry Wu's Bitter Winds starts earlier, during Mao's "Great Leap Forward." Mao was a megalomaniac whose ideological boorishness convulsed his nation causing the deaths of tens of million (Seventy million according to June Chang and Jon Halliday in Mao: The Untold Story.)
The Great Leap Forward was the Soviet-style collectivization of China's agricultural sector which produced the famine of 1958-61. Marxist/Leninist theory always had the profound undergirding of an absolute ignorance of market mechanisms. Of course, these mechanisms function whether one ignores them or not. When Mao and his henchmen ignored them he starved to death, just in this 3-year period, roughly (the figure is real but inexact) 40 million of his own countrymen and women.
Harry Wu was a kid in Catholic school in Shanghai in 1949 when the People's Liberation Army defeated Chang Kai Shek and the Nationalists. Harry's father, a rational person, a banker, who could not imagine the reign of wooden-headed ideologues that were about to descend on his nation, decided to stay when Mao took power. Big mistake. Harry's Catholic teachers, seeing the writing on the wall, fled.
In the interregnum, as the Communists took hold of the reins of power, Harry, a smart kid, read in the Party newspaper about his country's need for geologists to discover the raw materials for China's new industrialist future. He was accepted into a five-year program at a new Beijing institute. But academic work, which Harry was very good at, wasn't what was valued at school. What was valued was mindless reiterations of the Party line.
Harry became caught up in Mao's period of Party self-criticism known to us in the West as the "Hundred Flowers Campaign." ("Let a hundred flowers bloom," wrote the Great Helmsman, "and let a hundred schools of thought contend.") This was a trap to get people to incriminate themselves. Millions were so caught and Harry Wu was among them. He was jailed as a counter-revolutionary rightest. No, I'm not sure what that means either. To the Communists in power however it meant that Harry wasn't ideologically acceptable. It meant he had been born into a banker's family and as such was irrevocably tainted.
We in the West have a hard time understanding the Chinese reverence for family. Suffice it to say that millenia of Confucian familial culture, of ancestor worship, and strict adherence to paternal rule had now given way to an ideology in which family was to be jettisoned. Under Soviet-style Communism, which China was busily adopting, breaking from one's family in order to become a true socialist was encouraged. But even In the Soviet Union—see Orlando Figes's The Whisperers—the strides made in this direction were piecemeal. In China the neural-cultural hardwiring was too great. It was almost impossible for the average Chinese to discard family connections. Thus, individual "crimes" became family crimes. In Harry Wu's case--as in the cases of millions of other unfortunates--his family, his brothers, his sisters, his father, his step-mother-- suffered for Harry's crimes, which we in fact a reaction to his father's "crimes."
Poor Harry had come to adulthood in a setting, religious though it might be, which was based on reason. The Communist Party was not based on reason, and being so young in this new atmosphere of bootlicking ideologues, Harry could not learn to lie quickly enough. Sad to say, but his innocence, his inability to dissemble—Harry had been raised to speak the truth—doomed him. He spent the next 19 years undergoing an utterly stupid program of corrective labor. He almost starved to death a number of times. There are scenes of prisoners dropping like flies from starvation that are almost unbearably moving.
The book is a harrowing read. It was co-written with American Carolyn Wakeman after Harry was released and managed to get away to the U.S. Later he went back with Ed Bradley of CBS's 60 Minutes in order to gather footage for an exposé on China's use of prison labor in the manufacture of export products. What we in the West know today about China's long term use of slave labor we owe to Harry Wu, this book, and his groundbreaking television journalism.
Highly recommended, but grim, not for the faint of heart or those living sheltered lives.
.
March 3, 2021
Harry Wu spent 19 years in a hellish Chinese Gulag for having come from a Bourgeouis background , and having been judged as insufficiently reformed into a 'new Socialist person'.
Here he documents the conditions in the Chinese gulag system , a giant factory of torture , starvation and death.
Over 60 million Chinese have died since the Communists seized power in China in 1949.
It is a story of the unbelievable brutality and evil of Maoist China , that still continues today. It is also a story of survival , and the unbelievable odds under which Harry Wu survived. He dedicates this powerful expose to the millions who died. And still Red China remains one of the most opressive and brutal totalitarian dictatorships on earth today.
It is a travesty that Red China enjoys such international standing
More must be done to expose and oppose China's genocidal tyranny.
After having gone into exile in the 1980's , Harry Wu returned secretly to China in 1991 to film the conditions in the hideous death factory gulags.
Here he documents the conditions in the Chinese gulag system , a giant factory of torture , starvation and death.
Over 60 million Chinese have died since the Communists seized power in China in 1949.
It is a story of the unbelievable brutality and evil of Maoist China , that still continues today. It is also a story of survival , and the unbelievable odds under which Harry Wu survived. He dedicates this powerful expose to the millions who died. And still Red China remains one of the most opressive and brutal totalitarian dictatorships on earth today.
It is a travesty that Red China enjoys such international standing
More must be done to expose and oppose China's genocidal tyranny.
After having gone into exile in the 1980's , Harry Wu returned secretly to China in 1991 to film the conditions in the hideous death factory gulags.
November 6, 2015
Perfecto para entender un poco mejor la política en los últimos 70 años de China. Es un testigo muy subjetivo, pues es una biografía al fin y al cabo, pero ahonda muchísimo en los campos de trabajo y la experiencia personal del autor. En algunos momentos es terrorífico.
November 13, 2012
Harry Wu (Chinese name: Wu Hongda, 吴 弘 达) is perhaps best known for his assertion that the Chinese government harvests organs for transplant from its prisoners. This book is about the years Harry spent as a political prisoner in China's huge system of forced labor camps. They are called Láodòng Gǎizào (劳动改造), Lao Gai, short for, which means Reform through Labor. Harry was born in 1937 in Shanghai. He was educated by Jesuits, who gave him the Western name, Harry. In Communist eyes, he had a bad class background, because his father was a banker. Before his father died, his father told Harry that he regretted not having taken the family out of China when the Communists came to power.
Wu studied at the Beijing Geology Institute. When he arrived, the Communist Party required him to list the names, addresses, occupations and ages of all of his relatives. At a later time, they asked him to turn over his private diary. Anyone who had owned property was considered to be a capitalist, which was a bad thing. The Communists understand the relationship between the private ownership of property and political freedom, even if many Western intellectuals do not. In Communist China, there was a hierarchy of privilege, based upon class background. The factory workers (proletariat) and the peasants were at the top of the hierarchy. Well, actually, as Thomas Sowell has pointed out, those anointed to look out for the interests of the proletariat were perhaps a bit higher.
Harry Wu was arrested for being a rightist during the aftermath of the Hundred Flowers campaign of 1957. By performing manual agricultural labor in a prison camp, he was supposed to turn into a new socialist person. He slept on a kang, a large adobe brick stove that stayed warm through the night, even after the fire went out. A political prisoner had to cooperate to a certain degree with the authorities in order to survive. On the other hand, if he cooperated too much, he became known to the other prisoners as a lackey or running dog of the wardens. Harry cooperated enough to become a leader of a small work group, and to often get to work at a desk, instead of in the fields. One thing the jailers tried to prevent was for the political prisoners to spend to much time together. Wu's early years in the Lao Gai took place during Chairman Mao's failed agricultural experiment, the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962). They ate mainly corn and sorghum. Rice was a luxury. They were able to eat some vegetables, by stealing them when working in the fields. There was little protein in their diet, and many swelled up from edema. Many of the prisoners starved to death. The officials falsified the records of the causes of death by starvation, by attributing the death to something else. When they ran out of wood to build coffins, the dead were wrapped in reed mats. They had to avoid cuts, which might lead to dysentery. Harry boiled his food, to guard against infection. Even though he was a student who grew up soft, Harry learned to fight for himself in order to survive. His works of literature, such as translations of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Victor Hugo and Mark Twain, were his most valuable possessions and he hid them from the authorities.
After a number of years, Harry Wu graduated from being a political prisoner to forced job placement. The advantage of forced job placement is that you had more freedom, food and money. The disadvantage was that you now no longer had a fixed sentence and a hope for release when it was finished. Harry's forced job placement was at Wangzhuang Coal Mine in Shanxi province. At first he did manual labor, then he graduated to being an inspector, due to his technical background. In this new situation, in 1970, Harry eventually married an older woman, so he could live in a cave instead of in the male barracks. The marriage certificate contained the ligature for double happiness (囍) made up of two 喜 characters. When I worked at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, I often ate at the Double Happiness Chinese restaurant in Del Mar. Now I finally understand the meaning of the name.
Wu also lived through the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards, and the Gang of Four. He endured the famous "jet plane position" torture, where his arms were held behind his back. Wu was released from the Wangzhuang Coal Mine and his forced job placement in 1979. He became a teacher, first in Wuhan, later in Beijing. He left China in 1985 for California. He worked at Stanford's Hoover Institution, and set up the Laogai Foundation.
Wu studied at the Beijing Geology Institute. When he arrived, the Communist Party required him to list the names, addresses, occupations and ages of all of his relatives. At a later time, they asked him to turn over his private diary. Anyone who had owned property was considered to be a capitalist, which was a bad thing. The Communists understand the relationship between the private ownership of property and political freedom, even if many Western intellectuals do not. In Communist China, there was a hierarchy of privilege, based upon class background. The factory workers (proletariat) and the peasants were at the top of the hierarchy. Well, actually, as Thomas Sowell has pointed out, those anointed to look out for the interests of the proletariat were perhaps a bit higher.
Harry Wu was arrested for being a rightist during the aftermath of the Hundred Flowers campaign of 1957. By performing manual agricultural labor in a prison camp, he was supposed to turn into a new socialist person. He slept on a kang, a large adobe brick stove that stayed warm through the night, even after the fire went out. A political prisoner had to cooperate to a certain degree with the authorities in order to survive. On the other hand, if he cooperated too much, he became known to the other prisoners as a lackey or running dog of the wardens. Harry cooperated enough to become a leader of a small work group, and to often get to work at a desk, instead of in the fields. One thing the jailers tried to prevent was for the political prisoners to spend to much time together. Wu's early years in the Lao Gai took place during Chairman Mao's failed agricultural experiment, the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962). They ate mainly corn and sorghum. Rice was a luxury. They were able to eat some vegetables, by stealing them when working in the fields. There was little protein in their diet, and many swelled up from edema. Many of the prisoners starved to death. The officials falsified the records of the causes of death by starvation, by attributing the death to something else. When they ran out of wood to build coffins, the dead were wrapped in reed mats. They had to avoid cuts, which might lead to dysentery. Harry boiled his food, to guard against infection. Even though he was a student who grew up soft, Harry learned to fight for himself in order to survive. His works of literature, such as translations of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Victor Hugo and Mark Twain, were his most valuable possessions and he hid them from the authorities.
After a number of years, Harry Wu graduated from being a political prisoner to forced job placement. The advantage of forced job placement is that you had more freedom, food and money. The disadvantage was that you now no longer had a fixed sentence and a hope for release when it was finished. Harry's forced job placement was at Wangzhuang Coal Mine in Shanxi province. At first he did manual labor, then he graduated to being an inspector, due to his technical background. In this new situation, in 1970, Harry eventually married an older woman, so he could live in a cave instead of in the male barracks. The marriage certificate contained the ligature for double happiness (囍) made up of two 喜 characters. When I worked at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, I often ate at the Double Happiness Chinese restaurant in Del Mar. Now I finally understand the meaning of the name.
Wu also lived through the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards, and the Gang of Four. He endured the famous "jet plane position" torture, where his arms were held behind his back. Wu was released from the Wangzhuang Coal Mine and his forced job placement in 1979. He became a teacher, first in Wuhan, later in Beijing. He left China in 1985 for California. He worked at Stanford's Hoover Institution, and set up the Laogai Foundation.
July 22, 2013
I found this book very interesting, it taught me about the hardship that people went through for such little counterrevolutionary crimes. I found the punishments in this book horrific, the amount of labour Harry Wu had to go through for just sharing his opinion was astounding. Harry Wu explains everything in such detail, this helped me to so clearly imagine everything that went on at the labour camp. Through this book Harry Wu explains the hardships they go through such as nearly starving and such long hours of labour and through this book i not only begin to admire Harry Wu but also everyone that went through the journey with him. Overall i found this book very interesting.
May 29, 2011
p87 "suddenly the traditional practice of footbinding came to mind, We have switched to headbinding, I thought. It's no longer the fashion of bind a woman's feet, but they bind a person's thoughts instead. That way the mind can't move freely. That way ideas all take on the same size and shape, and thinking becomes impossible. That's why they arrested me. That's why they want to change me, that's why they force me to reform."
p. 115 "In the year and a half since my arrest, I had never seen myself in a mirror. I stared down at my washboard ribcage and realized that I must have look equally wasted and unkempt, with my face unshaved, my hair long and uncombed. Those people must once have been doctors or teachers, factory workers or peasants, I thought, each with his own heaven and hell, his own hopes and problems. Now they are virtually indistinguishable. If Chairman Mao were to spend a year in the camps, he would look no different. My anger flared briefly. Were these the new socialist people that Chairman Mao wanted to create? Was this the glorious result of reforming yourself through labor?"
An eye opening book into a mans life who for 19 years had to wait for the Mao regime to pass before he could get released from prison. It brought to mind one of Aldous Huxley's phrases "herd poisoning". People trying to prove their "redness" and acting like animals.
Amazingly he retains his dignity and courage, but knowing he could never be free in China moves to the US. "The political campaigns that had struck again and again after 1949 had taught a bitter lesson. The Communist Party would tolerate only those who tucked their tails between their legs and bowed before their absolute authority. I could not do that."
He then risked his life to show these abuses of the prison system by going back to clandestinely videotape most of the prisons he had been incarcerated in and interviewing people he had met. He then is able to smuggle out the tapes for CBS 60 Minutes TV show.
In the end the reality was that the suffering that affected just about everyone in China was caused by the Party's leadership. Wu triumphed in the end. He never gave in.
p. 115 "In the year and a half since my arrest, I had never seen myself in a mirror. I stared down at my washboard ribcage and realized that I must have look equally wasted and unkempt, with my face unshaved, my hair long and uncombed. Those people must once have been doctors or teachers, factory workers or peasants, I thought, each with his own heaven and hell, his own hopes and problems. Now they are virtually indistinguishable. If Chairman Mao were to spend a year in the camps, he would look no different. My anger flared briefly. Were these the new socialist people that Chairman Mao wanted to create? Was this the glorious result of reforming yourself through labor?"
An eye opening book into a mans life who for 19 years had to wait for the Mao regime to pass before he could get released from prison. It brought to mind one of Aldous Huxley's phrases "herd poisoning". People trying to prove their "redness" and acting like animals.
Amazingly he retains his dignity and courage, but knowing he could never be free in China moves to the US. "The political campaigns that had struck again and again after 1949 had taught a bitter lesson. The Communist Party would tolerate only those who tucked their tails between their legs and bowed before their absolute authority. I could not do that."
He then risked his life to show these abuses of the prison system by going back to clandestinely videotape most of the prisons he had been incarcerated in and interviewing people he had met. He then is able to smuggle out the tapes for CBS 60 Minutes TV show.
In the end the reality was that the suffering that affected just about everyone in China was caused by the Party's leadership. Wu triumphed in the end. He never gave in.
May 24, 2010
290 pages. Donated 2010 May.
In April 1960, Chinese Communist authorities arrested Harry Wu, the son of a well-to-do Shanghai banker. He was cast into a prison camp and, though never formally charged or tried, he spent the next nineteen years in a hellish netherworld of grinding labor, systematic starvation, and torture. Bitter Winds is the powerful story of Harry Wu's imprisonment and survival, of extraordinary acts of courage, and of unforgettable heroism.
In April 1960, Chinese Communist authorities arrested Harry Wu, the son of a well-to-do Shanghai banker. He was cast into a prison camp and, though never formally charged or tried, he spent the next nineteen years in a hellish netherworld of grinding labor, systematic starvation, and torture. Bitter Winds is the powerful story of Harry Wu's imprisonment and survival, of extraordinary acts of courage, and of unforgettable heroism.
September 25, 2012
An engrossing non-fiction account of a man's struggle to survive almost two decades in China's torturous prison system under Chairman Mao. You don't have to be any sort of expert on China to fully appreciate the determination and moral compromises made by Henry Wu. Well written and edited, the story pulled me all the way through in just four sittings.
November 3, 2019
Me ha parecido muy aburrido, repetitivo y poco creíble.
February 4, 2014
Bitter Winds by Harry Wu
The author of this memoir was interred in Chinese re-education labor camps from the late 1950s to the mid 1970s. Although the prose is unremarkable, the story is arresting. It is amazing that a society could heal, even prosper after such a divisive, violent fear-filled period that lasted for several decades.
The author of this memoir was interred in Chinese re-education labor camps from the late 1950s to the mid 1970s. Although the prose is unremarkable, the story is arresting. It is amazing that a society could heal, even prosper after such a divisive, violent fear-filled period that lasted for several decades.
October 24, 2022
Een aangrijpend en gedetailleerd verslag van de auteur die van 1960 - 1979 aaneengesloten in diverse strafkampen verbleef. Wu was een student geologie die van plan was zijn opleiding en kennis te gebruiken voor de ontwikkeling van zijn land. Hoe anders zou het lopen, intellectuelen kregen het zwaar. Hij werd in 1960 als ‘contrarevolutionair’ gearresteerd en moest 19 jaar lang in boerderijen, fabrieken en mijnen ‘werken aan zijn hervorming’.
Als je een ander niet beschuldigde van subversieve opmerkingen of activiteiten dan werd je zelf wel aangeklaagd. Als je niet met de actuele politieke stroming meeging dan was je automatisch een vijand van de staat en dus een gevaar. Zelfs tegen familieleden kon je niet eerlijk voor je mening uitkomen. Sterker nog, kinderen werden aangespoord om eventuele misstappen van hun ouders te rapporteren.
De volgende analogie van de schrijver geeft voor mij duidelijk weer hoe mensen door de staat geconditioneerd werden: “Plotseling schoot mij de traditie van het inbinden van voeten door het hoofd. Wij zijn overgestapt op het inbinden van hoofden, dacht ik. Het is niet langer mode om de voeten van vrouwen in te binden, maar in plaats daarvan worden de gedachten van de mens ingebonden. Op die manier kan de mens niet langer vrij denken. Zodoende krijgen alle ideeën dezelfde vorm en omvang en wordt echt denken onmogelijk. Daarom hebben ze me gearresteerd, daarom willen ze dat ik verander”.
Het algemene verhaal van toen is wel bekend. De details van dit soepel geschreven boek geven echter een nog duidelijkere inkijk in de toenmalige methodes van de Communistische Partij. Die methodes zijn helaas nog steeds hetzelfde. In regio’s als Tibet en Xinjiang worden nog steeds dezelfde manier hele bevolkingsgroepen onderdrukt, maar nu met behulp van de meest moderne surveillance technieken…
Als je een ander niet beschuldigde van subversieve opmerkingen of activiteiten dan werd je zelf wel aangeklaagd. Als je niet met de actuele politieke stroming meeging dan was je automatisch een vijand van de staat en dus een gevaar. Zelfs tegen familieleden kon je niet eerlijk voor je mening uitkomen. Sterker nog, kinderen werden aangespoord om eventuele misstappen van hun ouders te rapporteren.
De volgende analogie van de schrijver geeft voor mij duidelijk weer hoe mensen door de staat geconditioneerd werden: “Plotseling schoot mij de traditie van het inbinden van voeten door het hoofd. Wij zijn overgestapt op het inbinden van hoofden, dacht ik. Het is niet langer mode om de voeten van vrouwen in te binden, maar in plaats daarvan worden de gedachten van de mens ingebonden. Op die manier kan de mens niet langer vrij denken. Zodoende krijgen alle ideeën dezelfde vorm en omvang en wordt echt denken onmogelijk. Daarom hebben ze me gearresteerd, daarom willen ze dat ik verander”.
Het algemene verhaal van toen is wel bekend. De details van dit soepel geschreven boek geven echter een nog duidelijkere inkijk in de toenmalige methodes van de Communistische Partij. Die methodes zijn helaas nog steeds hetzelfde. In regio’s als Tibet en Xinjiang worden nog steeds dezelfde manier hele bevolkingsgroepen onderdrukt, maar nu met behulp van de meest moderne surveillance technieken…
February 21, 2023
Harry Wu was a college student in Beijing when he was arrested for imaginary crimes against the Communist Party in 1960. He spent the next 19 years in forced labor prisons. He was released in 1979 and was permitted to go to the USA in 1985 where he eventually became an associate of Stanford University's Hoover Institute. In 1991 he returned to China where he secretly filmed several forced labor prisons still in operation, which became video evidence for an episode of CBS'S 60 Minutes. Upon his return to the US, he also testified before the House of Representatives. If China was still locking people up for labor reform in 1991, we can be sure that they are still doing so today.
February 8, 2021
Un libro difícil de leer por lo que cuenta, aunque muy bien escrito. La vida de un estudiante chino que quería servir a su país estudiando geología, pero que por la paranoia y fanatismo políticos de 1957 lo resultan acusando de enemigo del partido comunista, lo que le cuesta ser apresado en la universidad donde tenía altas calificaciones y destacaba en deportes, para ir a campos de trabajo, donde básicamente se convirtió en un recluso esclavo, junto con otros prisioneros políticos y delincuentes comunes aprendió a someterse al partido. Se dió cuenta que su cómoda vida de clase media de antes de la revolución y aún de estudiante se había acabado y que de nada le servirían sus estudios, el campesino analfabeto Xing fue su maestro en el arte de sobrevivir cuando en la prisión ni le daban comida. Pasó varios años pasando hambre, llegó a pesar 36 Kg., viendo como sus compañeros de celda morían, la dureza de los guardias, las traiciones entre presos, y los constantes castigos y autoacusaciones que tenían que decir contra si mismos en las diarias clases políticas de reeducación en que se juraba lealtad a Mao.
Duros inviernos y amargas experiencias pasó, aprendiendo a ver como una madriguera de ratas podía ser un gran tesoro, ya que no le daban carne, ni proteínas en la poca comida que le daban. Incluso las hojas de las coles eran un lujo que los guardias tenían, los presos tenían que robar a escondidas hojas de col o buscar raíces, serpientes o cualquier cosa que se pudiera masticar para no morir de hambre.
Vió como sus compañeros murieron de hambre o se suicidaban ante la pérdida total de esperanza. La locura, la venganza y las riñas internas entre presos fue parte de lo que vió entre sus compañeros.
Cuando creía que las cosas no podían ir peor se dió la revolución cultural y hasta los guardias tenían miedo de la cacería de brujas que se daba en el exterior por la euforia de los jóvenes revolucionarios de Mao que destrozaron cada familia de China. La época más oscura de China, en que ser intelectual era un crimen.
Así pasó 20 años de su vida entre prisiones, campos de trabajo y minas, sobreviviendo al hambre, a accidentes, palizas, castigos e injusticias. Hasta que Deng XiaoPing asumió el mando y unos años después fueron liberados poco a poco los presos políticos acusados de derechistas.
Tuvo un doloroso reencuentro con su familia que no veía tantos años, cuando su padre murió le pidió que dejara China, y así luego de años de intentos vanos logra ir a Estados Unidos, donde escribe sus memorias pero decide hacer un documental sobre las prisiones de China ya que poco o nada se sabía de ellas, y así vuelve a China en los 90s y se pone a grabar a escondidas arriesgándose a que si lo atrapaban volvería a prisión, pero no lo descubren.
Perdió a su novia, a sus amigos de la universidad, se peleó con su hermano, su padre fue acusado también de enemigo del régimen, su madrastra se suicidió, la tumba de su madre fue destruída por la revolución cultural, su juventud robada y todo por una acusación de fanáticos que querían congraciarse con el régimen acusando a alguien, sin que hubiera juicio y arrestado sin que le dijeran cuales eran sus crímenes, así pasó 20 años a un paso de la muerte.
Un pasaje más de la historia de la locura de la humanidad y sus fanatismos políticos que pueden llevar a destruir vidas, familias y países.
Duros inviernos y amargas experiencias pasó, aprendiendo a ver como una madriguera de ratas podía ser un gran tesoro, ya que no le daban carne, ni proteínas en la poca comida que le daban. Incluso las hojas de las coles eran un lujo que los guardias tenían, los presos tenían que robar a escondidas hojas de col o buscar raíces, serpientes o cualquier cosa que se pudiera masticar para no morir de hambre.
Vió como sus compañeros murieron de hambre o se suicidaban ante la pérdida total de esperanza. La locura, la venganza y las riñas internas entre presos fue parte de lo que vió entre sus compañeros.
Cuando creía que las cosas no podían ir peor se dió la revolución cultural y hasta los guardias tenían miedo de la cacería de brujas que se daba en el exterior por la euforia de los jóvenes revolucionarios de Mao que destrozaron cada familia de China. La época más oscura de China, en que ser intelectual era un crimen.
Así pasó 20 años de su vida entre prisiones, campos de trabajo y minas, sobreviviendo al hambre, a accidentes, palizas, castigos e injusticias. Hasta que Deng XiaoPing asumió el mando y unos años después fueron liberados poco a poco los presos políticos acusados de derechistas.
Tuvo un doloroso reencuentro con su familia que no veía tantos años, cuando su padre murió le pidió que dejara China, y así luego de años de intentos vanos logra ir a Estados Unidos, donde escribe sus memorias pero decide hacer un documental sobre las prisiones de China ya que poco o nada se sabía de ellas, y así vuelve a China en los 90s y se pone a grabar a escondidas arriesgándose a que si lo atrapaban volvería a prisión, pero no lo descubren.
Perdió a su novia, a sus amigos de la universidad, se peleó con su hermano, su padre fue acusado también de enemigo del régimen, su madrastra se suicidió, la tumba de su madre fue destruída por la revolución cultural, su juventud robada y todo por una acusación de fanáticos que querían congraciarse con el régimen acusando a alguien, sin que hubiera juicio y arrestado sin que le dijeran cuales eran sus crímenes, así pasó 20 años a un paso de la muerte.
Un pasaje más de la historia de la locura de la humanidad y sus fanatismos políticos que pueden llevar a destruir vidas, familias y países.
July 23, 2013
Definitely one of the better prison memoirs and provides insight into the ugly side of the Chinese communist state when it was still dictated by it's fanatical revolutionary dogma. Essential reading for anyone with an interest in Chinese history.
October 4, 2013
Harry Wu spent 19 years of his life inside the Chinese prisons. He had no trial, no support, but he still survived. Now, in America, he is fighting to change things for others. He is an inspiration. Because of the topic, it wasn't an easy book to read but one that I'm glad I did.
Read
October 3, 2009A very well written and informative book of life in the penal labor colony. This sheds light on a time that was harrowing.
August 28, 2010
Very well written and intriguing. He tells of life as a political prisoner in China without overwhelming bitterness. This had to be very difficult to write.
October 12, 2010
This is one of my favorites.
Read
July 31, 2011Estremecedor relato de veinte años de internamiento en campos de trabajo del gobierno chino, sin juicio y sin derecho a defensa. Muy bueno
August 27, 2015
I bought this book after hearing the author speak at a lecture.
March 6, 2014
An unforgettable eighteen-year journey with Chinese intellectual Harry Wu through prisons during Mao's reign. Visual, heart-rendering, and triumphant.
July 31, 2017
“Suddenly my mind became animated, and I had what seemed almost a revelation. Human life has no value here, I thought bitterly. It has no more importance than a cigarette ash flicked in the wind. But if a person’s life has no value, then the society that shapes that life has no value either. If the people mean no more than dust, then the society is worthless and does not deserve to continue. If the society should not continue, then I should oppose it.”
Wu says at one point, reflecting on his time in the gulag system. He was initially imprisoned in 1960, during Mao’s Great Leap Forward (1958-62), and his only apparent wrongdoings were to be intelligent, open minded, stubborn and to have been born into a wealthy background. For these alleged “crimes” he was locked up for nineteen years in various labour camps around China. The places Wu is sent to are plagued with disease, starvation and occasional violence and intimidation. He watches countless die before him as escape and suicide grow more appealing by the day and many attempt one or both in order to end their misery. He talks of being so physically drained that he stops brushing his teeth in order to conserve energy. He endured varying levels of poverty, hardship, suffering and death along the way and precious little, so called “re-education”
He describes his incredibly privileged and sheltered upbringing in Shanghai, which included three servants. It was the late 40s and the war between the nationalists and communists was just coming to an end and Mao coming to power. Things begin to change when one day in 1952 his father didn’t return home from his job at the bank. He appeared a month later and nothing more is said about it. He later discovered that he was taken captive and interrogated by the authorities questioning him about his boss’s financial activities.
There are obvious parallels to be drawn between this and Solzhenitsyn in the USSR, but more than that, what was going on in 50s China, with what was going on in the US at around the same time, on one hand you had the Chinese caught up in the madness of imprisoning and killing people for being “Rightist or Capitalist” and meanwhile Stateside they were caught up in McCarthyism, calling people “Leftist or Communism” ruining their lives and careers. Obviously in China circumstances were far more grim and murderous, though the US was certainly not without its serious problems to tackle.
Wu endured some truly appalling conditions and was witness to even worse ones, like the frankly medieval murder of one inmate, “The executioner had shot the prisoner at close range, severing the head. He had then scooped out the brains and given them to one of the mine captains named Li, who seventy-year old father had eaten them for their medicinal qualities.”
Wu eventually moved to the US to start anew and in spite of the serious risks, he decided to return to China in 1991 with CBS and returns to some of the places he was imprisoned and manages to take some pictures and capture secret film footage, as well as talk to some of the people he knew from the camps. He manages to collate a fair amount of damning evidence of China’s sinister policy of using the prisoner’s labour for commercial gains abroad and it’s later shown on “60 Minutes” which is quickly rubbished by the Chinese as propaganda.
This was a really interesting story, though I found the writing a little flat at times, but translating from mandarin is always going to be a mammoth task and this is certainly worth the read, particularly for those with an interest in the hidden and murky world of China's gulags.
March 14, 2021
No se espera menos de este libro que pasar entre sus páginas con el estómago contraído y mucha angustia. Y así es, una historia dura, llena de injusticia y salvajismo, que duele más porque se sabe real.
Harry Wu, con la ayuda de la periodista Carolyn Wakeman, nos cuenta su vida en la China comunista, durante la revolución cultural. Sólo se puede saber de totalitarismo leyendo esta clase de libros, sólo visibilizando estas historias vamos comprendiendo la tiranía popular.
Vientos amargos hace evidente la época de carencias y escasez en la China de los 50/60 en la que el programa de gobierno sobre la producción agrícula y de acero se creían como la solución a problemas que sólo se acentuaron.
El hambre, la de verdad, no aquella que nos pone de mal humor porque el cocinero se ha pasado unos minutos para servir la sopa, no la que nos produce jaqueca por un par de horas de retraso. No, el hambre real, la inanición, es para mí uno de los principales temas que, obvio, pone de manifiesto el resto de las realidades.
Morir de hambre no es sólo dejar de comer, es haber peleado hasta con nuestros más elementales recursos de superviviencia, incluyendo quizá el de traicionar, mentir y matar.
Como todos los sistemas totalitarios, incluso en la familia encontramos al delator, al que excluye a los que no se han convertido a la ideología hemónica... la renuncia a la pertencia tiene que ser otro proceso doloroso frente al sistema.
Un libro muy duro, un libro que se clava en las entrañas, pero contado de tal forma que no puedes soltarlo. Este es un texto que forma parte de mi #marzoasiático
Harry Wu, con la ayuda de la periodista Carolyn Wakeman, nos cuenta su vida en la China comunista, durante la revolución cultural. Sólo se puede saber de totalitarismo leyendo esta clase de libros, sólo visibilizando estas historias vamos comprendiendo la tiranía popular.
Vientos amargos hace evidente la época de carencias y escasez en la China de los 50/60 en la que el programa de gobierno sobre la producción agrícula y de acero se creían como la solución a problemas que sólo se acentuaron.
El hambre, la de verdad, no aquella que nos pone de mal humor porque el cocinero se ha pasado unos minutos para servir la sopa, no la que nos produce jaqueca por un par de horas de retraso. No, el hambre real, la inanición, es para mí uno de los principales temas que, obvio, pone de manifiesto el resto de las realidades.
Morir de hambre no es sólo dejar de comer, es haber peleado hasta con nuestros más elementales recursos de superviviencia, incluyendo quizá el de traicionar, mentir y matar.
Como todos los sistemas totalitarios, incluso en la familia encontramos al delator, al que excluye a los que no se han convertido a la ideología hemónica... la renuncia a la pertencia tiene que ser otro proceso doloroso frente al sistema.
Un libro muy duro, un libro que se clava en las entrañas, pero contado de tal forma que no puedes soltarlo. Este es un texto que forma parte de mi #marzoasiático
June 27, 2013
Although this is an interesting insight into China's gulag written by a man who experienced it first hand the book is not well written. Its clear that Harry Wu must have been emotionally damaged by his experiences (who wouldn't have been) bu the story is told in a rather flat and unemotional way. However, this is an important book that reminds us of the dreadful suffering of the Chinese people under Mao.
November 17, 2014
This is a good read about the living conditions during the Communist Revolution in China. It will, of course, be hard for a lot of people to read, so you need to know ahead of time that you won't be reading a fun book. That much should be obvious, though.
If you're going to read one memoir about gulags or prison camps or the Holocaust, I'd recommend one about the Holocaust and then just read a basic history of the other stuff, but this could be a fine replacement.
If you're going to read one memoir about gulags or prison camps or the Holocaust, I'd recommend one about the Holocaust and then just read a basic history of the other stuff, but this could be a fine replacement.
June 6, 2019
Eén van de twee boeken die ik gelezen heb over de Chinese 20e eeuwse geschiedenis. Dit is het indrukwekkende persoonlijke verhaal van Harry Wu die 19 jaar (negentien jaar!) in de chinese goelags heeft doorgebracht, als vijand van het volk.
Je weet dat het goed met hem is afgelopen want zijn foto en kort levensverhaal staat op de kaft maar daaraan twijfel je als je het boek leest.
Hoe moeilijk is het voor ons om de chinese volksaard en de chinees als mens te doorgronden.
Je weet dat het goed met hem is afgelopen want zijn foto en kort levensverhaal staat op de kaft maar daaraan twijfel je als je het boek leest.
Hoe moeilijk is het voor ons om de chinese volksaard en de chinees als mens te doorgronden.
September 15, 2013
Duríssim testimoni dels "laogai" de la Xina de Mao.
August 14, 2016
Sad story. I found it somewhat repetitive (as he probably did living the circumstances).
October 17, 2017
Wu is an immensely courageous person.
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