Lee Tien-hui, the cellist and music teacher, caused quite a stir a few months ago when she left the University of Minnesota, where she had been sent by the communists for training, and came to Taiwan. Why should this woman, a respected professor for seventeen years, leave her family and friends for a new and untried life?

Perhaps it should not be so hard to understand when you hear her story. When the communists came to the town in Hupei Province where her family lived, Lee Tien-hui was just a tot. As a child, she wondered why her sister, who had returned from musical studies in America, seemed troubled and despondent most of the time. She also wondered why her mother one day called her aside and gave her a cryptic message "You must learn to silently bear all emotional wounds and scars." But at that time she was still full of hope--hope that she could be a musician like her sister and also know the happiness of marriage, motherhood and family life.

Reality entered in all too swiftly. In 1957 her sister had a mental breakdown, a victim of the successive purges and psychological pressures which people even in the music schools had to endure. Lee went on to college and found out what had broken her sister. She and her classmates had to deal with hunger, the result of an inefficient and corrupt system of food rationing. They had to worry about being sent to the countryside, often thousands of miles from family, friends and school.

Lee survived her college years because she learned early when and to whom it would be safe to speak from her heart, when to conceal her true thoughts, and how to avoid beatings or the excruciating pain of being brainwashed. "I was always nervous," she says, "not knowing when the Red Guards would find out my real feelings. Then, when at last I was accused of being a reactionary; I didn't know who had betrayed me, or if I had somehow betrayed myself. The Red Guards forced me to write posters for public placement in which I denounced my family as traitors and myself for being a traitor's daughter. For my "crimes", I was sent to work in the fields, given a chance to repent. But I kept asking myself what I had really done wrong. After a while, I started believing that I must have something wrong with me, that I was some kind of a criminal."

Lee survived all this nightmarish period, though many of her classmates and teachers did not, and she finally graduated from college. Then she married a classmate, but her dreams of family happiness were soon shattered. She and her son were separated from her husband. They had to work in cities several hundred miles apart. "We repeatedly petitioned the government over the next seven years, but we were always denied the right to be reunited. Even once when my son's eye was seriously injured, I called for my husband. He wanted to come too, but it was not allowed." He was told "You live for the betterment of the revolution. You may not put your private life before the party." For her, that was the last straw. She could no longer endure the unendurable. She resolved to leave the China mainland and its misery behind if she could get the chance.

Lee's chance came in March of 1981 when she was sent to the United States for study. At that time, she resolved to defect, and she successfully made her way to Taiwan, where she is now teaching and trying to reconstruct her shattered life.

In Taiwan she can develop her musical talents in a freer atmosphere and live a life without harassment, but where is the happy home that she dreamed of as a child? She would like to have her family together again, to know that kind of warmth and security, but who knows when that can be, if ever?

[Picture Caption]

Left: Lee Tien-hui returned to the Republic of China in order to practice her art in freedom. Right: Lee Tien-hui during an interview at SINORAMA.

Left: Lee Tien-hui holds a press conference. Right: Lee Tien-hui (left) tells famed songstress Theresa Teng that her daughter can sing all of Miss Teng's songs.

During one of her many speeches since her arrival in Taiwan, Lee Tien-hui expresses her approval of Chinese New Year celebrations on Taiwan.

Lee Tien-hui during an interview at SINORAMA.

Lee Tien-hui holds a press conference.

Lee Tien-hui （left） tells famed songstress Theresa Teng that her daughter can sing all of Miss Teng's songs.

During one of her many speeches since her arrival in Taiwan, Lee Tien-hui expresses her approval of Chinese New Year celebrations on Taiwan.