Captive spirits
Subtitle: prisoners of the Cultural Revolution
By: Yang Xiguang and Susan McFadden.
Contributors: McFadden, Susan, 1952-
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Hong Kong; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 302
Subjects: Yang, Xiaokai.; Political prisoners -- China -- Anecdotes.; China -- History -- Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976 -- Personal narratives.
Description: In the midst of the Cultural Revolution a Rebel Red Guard anonymously circulated an essay condemning the Chinese Party elite as a decadent, exploitative 'new red capitalist class'. The subversive yet truthful nature of the message stung the top Communist leadership in Beijing. Incredibly, the writer, Yang Xiguang, was only nineteen years old, a star high school pupil and the son of high-ranking Hunan officials. Denounced as a 'counterrevolutionary' by Chairman Mao himself, Yang was hunted down, arrested in 1968, and sentenced to ten years in prison. Captive Spirits is his remarkable story of life in the Chinese gulag during one of the most tumultuous periods of modern Chinese history.