After a few chapters full of optimism and some hope, these later chapters have once again gown darker- thought it horrendous when the father was driven mad by the torture and beatings he had recieved!! The heinous way Jung's mother was abused too- to the extent that her womb began to bleed!!!!! This book is so shocking - mao is lke a puppet master with the chines people histoys- after new year I must try and read Mao again as I really want to learn mor about how such a monster could come to and remain in power. Next tme I try to read it I will mke sureI o acopy- one of the reasons I gaveup wa that I felt pressued by the libary to read it before it's due date and its no small book!!!

Not that it makes it any better but this is not white against black we are reading about or two seperate nations attacking each others people, it is a country systematically abusing its fellow countrymen- they might as well have attacked all people with different coloured eyes- surely china should have been uniting its people for a common cause not promoting unrest amongst its citizens. this is a very scary book and some of the things i have been reading i cannot even begin to comprehend! It i alost imossible to imagine such a society

I don't think her womb started bleeding because of the torture, it said a few chapters ago that she had problems with it for years.  But making it worse is still bad enough!

I am quite impressed with the father though being so principled.  It's just a shame that the people who rise to the top in communism aren't the principled ones, they're the ones who are looking after their own interests.

I am wondering though how much of it is Mao, he seems to have surrounded himself with ambitous people who seem to be promoting their own agendas, like his wife.  I don't know enough about it to make a judgement though.

maybe i am mistaken then-the first mention of her haemorrage i thought comes shortly after her grandmother learns of the mother being paraded through the streets and after much description of the abuse the mother suffered (pages 437-438) and as the haemorrage is talked about so soon after, i assumed the two to be connected.

further chapters are equally as horrible as anything that has preceeded before now; i can simply not comprehend being sent to what, is in effect, a forced labour camp. What is with the chinese that they would willingly treat their own people so- why aren't lessons learnt from the events that precipitated the rise of hitler in germany and the jewish concentration camps? that was bad enough but this is equally as terrifying in its own way

and find it incredible to think of the conditions the peasants had to live in. However I think this is going to be the turning point for Chang. Up until this point she's always reverted back to the mantra she's been taught that Mao is right. And if she's had any doubts then she's repressed them and worried about thought crime. Now that she's living in peasant conditions and having to work, she's finding out that all is not what she'd originally thought. I'm interested to see how her thoughts about Mao and the general life in China change over the coming chapters. I'm also keen to find out what happens to her family as they're all so scattered at this point.

The Tings, I can't believe how much power they had to carry out their personal vendettas.  Even in Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia we're used to hearing about the leader having all the power and being evil, but you don't hear about 'ordinary' lower down people having so much opportunity.

It was strange reading about Chan's starting to question Mao, it's almost beyond belief how people were so indoctrinated.

I don't understand why her sister couldn't move back to the city?  It seems insane that her and her husband were both city people but she had to stay in the country.  I just can't figure out a reason for it at all.

It's amazing the lengths she went to to get out of the country legally, and the lengths the authorities went to to try and make sure any ex pats would want to come back.

It's interesting that it was really only after the death of Mao that Chang really started to realise that it was he that controlled the demise of their country. Mme Mao and her Gang of Four only had power when Mao was Chairman, once he'd gone then their regime started to fall apart.