Han Hsiu's novel, more than 300,000 characters in length, is divided into 29 chapters, each forming a unit with an independent theme. The author has clearly been influenced by Russian realism. Her style, like Turgenev's in A Sportsman's Sketches, is heartfelt, finely crafted and rich in feeling. Here's a passage from Chapter One, "Who Are You?"

It was back in the first grade. One day I came home in tears. My grandmother, who was busy in the Kitchen, put down what she was doing and asked, "What's wrong?"

"The other children called me names."

"Why'd they do that?"

"I'm taller than they are and I've got curly hair."

I didn't notice her expression. I only remember what she said.

"I want straight hair, Grandma."

"All right. Our little Hsiu will get straight hair, too."

She wet a comb, combed my hair and held up a mirror.

"Take a look. It's straight now, isn't it?"

I smiled. But after a while it started to dry out in the warm sunlight and curl up again, lock by lock. I cried inconsolably.

A time of blood and tears: In the fiercely anti-American climate of mainland China in the 1950s, it was only natural that Han Hsiu, who strongly resembles her father, was ostracized and made fun of by her classmates. But for a tender, innocent child, it was all very cruel. Luckily, there was her doting grandmother to fall back on, whose love and concern is revealed in this passage.

During the 28 years that Han Hsiu lived there, mainland China was racked by a series of mass political campaigns, one following on top of the other. The major ones were the movements against the Three Evils and the Five Evils (1951 to 1953); the Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956 to 1958); the Three Red Banners, which included the Great Leap Forward, (1958 to 1965); and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1965 to 1976).

Given that context, a life of peace and tranquility was not to be expected, and as she grew older, the blows fell more heavily and with greater frequency. Fortunately, Han Hsiu has a strong will to survive, a quick intelligence and the resilience to adjust to circumstances, which enabled her to pick herself up after being knocked down and to fight her way back from the brink of death.

The first severe blow came when she applied to take the joint university entrance examinations after graduating from high school. Because of her problematical family background and class origin, she was deemed "unacceptable for admission" and shut out of the portals of higher education in mainland China forever.

Home has changed! Unable to enter college, Han Hsiu was sent to southern Shansi to work in the countryside on a collective production brigade. "You can't help what you were born as," the cadres told her, "but you can choose what path you take," and she had no choice but to set out down the "broad, healthy road" of socialist labor. Two years later the Cultural Revolution was launched, and to escape this storm of unprecedented proportions she volunteered to go to Sinkiang for "border region development." She was given a three-day pass to return to Peking to visit her family. But the city had changed. It had turned into a terrifying "city of demons."

The author devotes three chapters to describing this city of horrors. A high school classmate of hers, Kao Chi-fen, had become commander of the East Is Red Revolutionary Brigades and wielded the power of life and death. She lived in a carpeted Western-style house, with confiscated copies of banned books like The Golden Lotus and Black and Red on her shelves.

Elderly writers and performers who had been renowned in the arts and literature since the 1930s were reviled as "ox ghosts and snake demons," or vicious class enemies. The novelist Lao She was among the most tragic victims, as Han Hsiu relates:

"Denounced in the Writers' Association and then paraded in the streets, he was forced to kneel down and set fire to his books and to hold up a sign condemning himself . . . he couldn't hold it up . . . it fell down and hit the foot of a Red Guard . . . he had rebelled, they said . . . and was lashed with a whip. . . ."

Countless spirits of the wronged: The next day Lao She drowned himself in a lake. None of his family stopped him. Nor did any of the old people practicing Tai Chi nearby. In a world as chaotic as that, how could life compare with the peace of death?

According to the tenets of Marxism-Leninism, God is a creation of man. And indeed, the Communists are experts at creating gods--but false ones, and cruel. Lin Piao was a master at deification. Every day he held up a copy of The Quotations of Chairman Mao and shouted slogans, becoming Mao's closest comrade-in-arms and his picked successor. But when he was killed in a plane crash as he fled over Mongolia in September 1971, he was vilified as a traitor "linked to a foreign power."

Wu Yueh-hua, a young woman from Sinkiang, inadvertently used a sheet of paper with a picture of Chairman Mao on it during her monthly period. She was repeatedly denounced and then sentenced to eight years' imprisonment. Just two years before she was due to be released, she was mistreated so badly she hanged herself.

Han Hsiu remained in the Taklamakan desert of Sinkiang for nearly nine years. She learned Uighur and built deep friendships with the local people. Things were still rather quiet when she first arrived, but in the winter of 1973 a new campaign opened up, against Confucianism.

Taking refuge in the desert: Just then, the chief of staff of her construction brigade and the leader of her work team were both transferred. The two new cadres were innately prejudiced against her, and a public denunciation and attack followed. Han Hsiu was psychologically prepared: "You can't avoid what's coming sooner or later."

She survived this calamity through her wits and unbending opposition but then came down with inflammation of the kidneys, a disease requiring rest and aggravated by high temperatures. Her superiors deliberately tormented her, ordering her to work in temperatures of 40 and 50 degrees Celsius, which almost killed her. It was the Uighur people who saved her. Her journey to the brink of death and back is narrated in vivid detail, and the reader weeps and rejoices for her along with the twists in the plot.

In the winter of 1975, Han Hsiu finally obtained permission to return to Peking and bade farewell to the desert wilds she had lived in for nearly nine years. Back in the capital, she obtained work as an apprentice in a sewing factory. Following the death of Mao and the fall of the Gang of Four, her U.S. passport and birth certificate, which had been confiscated during the Cultural Revolution, were returned to her. Relying on these two documents, she set out to seek return to the United States. She encountered numerous difficulties and overcame all kinds of obstacles along the way, but on January 22, 1978, Han Hsiu finally left this land that had been so cold to her.

Unforgettable fear and suffering: Just before she departed, a Communist cadre gave her 300 renminbi and told her, "You've forgotten the unhappiness of the past, haven't you?"

"That won't be easy, I'm afraid. I just hope that the life of the Chinese people will be a little better from now on."

Han Hsiu loves China. She is a genuine American, but half her blood comes from the descendants of the Yellow Emperor. What's more, she lived in China since the age of four, was educated there and was steeled and forged in the Cultural Revolution. She loves China, yet how can she forget the fear and suffering wrought by the Chinese Communists?

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Author: Han Hsiu

Publisher: Youth Cultural Enterprise

Price: NT$260

Pages: 456