Thirty Years in a Red House: A Memoir of Childhood and Youth in Communist China
A splendid lesson in 20th-century Chinese history.(Boston Globe)Zhu's narrative is unique.... Zhu goes far beyond his family's ordeals, linking personal and family experiences to a broader comprehension of the [Chinese] nation's public history. The result is this highly readable and thoughtful illustration of Chinese society under Mao's rule.(Choice)An engaging account of one family's triumphs and travails in Mao Tse-tung's Communist China. And Zhu's is no ordinary family. Nearly every significant event in recent Chinese history seems to have a link to a close relative.(Boston Herald)This well-written memoir by a student of English tells of daily life from his birth in China in 1958 to his departure in 1987.... Engrossing and engaging.(Library Journal)Provides a balanced and realistic view of one family's experience in post-revolutionary China. In addition to offering readers a glimpse of the personal life of a Chinese official [Zhu's father] and the ideals that inspired him, Zhu's memoir documents his own coming of age and eventual departure from a country that ultimately failed to live up to the hard-fought ideals of his father's generation.(Sampan)