A Leaf in the Bitter Wind

Gary Watson is a former lecturer in Chinese studies at Queen’s University and is now a multimedia developer in Mississauga.

Chinese émigré memoirs present detailed, often damaging, versions of
key events in the People’s Republic of China. Whether subtle or
strident, these witnesses reveal a state convulsed by political and
economic policies that cost its citizens dearly. This book is among the
more poignant recollections of life on the Chinese road to socialism
after 1949.

Born in 1952 into a Shanghai small-business family, the author
describes how talent and skilful manipulation of family connections
quietly subverted the rigidities of Communist politics. Like many, she
was “sent down” to the countryside to “learn from the peasants,”
a program that stranded millions of students in remote villages. She
found time to study English and was accepted into Beijing University in
the early 1970s. Her first job was, ironically, with the state security
organization, whose members had hounded Ye and her family years earlier.
While taking advanced English studies in Beijing, she met the teacher
who would later help her leave China for Canada.

Ye’s account of the Cultural Revolution, her experience as a Red
Guard, and the extraordinary, albeit brief, freedom it brought, makes
compelling reading. Her story, rich in the kind of emotional detail that
more analytical works seldom include, deepens our understanding of the
making of modern China.