Items Tagged With Cultural Revolution

Came across this recent article in the Washington Post by Chinese-American actress and director Joan Chen that was published on the day the Olympic Torch went through San Francisco.

I forget how far she's come since her childhood in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution.

 

I was born in Shanghai in 1961 and grew up during the Cultural Revolution. During my childhood, I saw my family lose our house. My grandfather, who studied medicine in England, committed suicide after he was wrongly accused of being a counterrevolutionary and a foreign spy.

Those were the worst of times.

Since the Cultural Revolution ended in the late 1970s, however, I have witnessed unimaginable progress in China. Changes that few ever thought possible have occurred in a single generation. A communist government that had no ties to the West has evolved into a more open government eager to join the international community.

 

I wasn't born in China. I was your typical Americanized kid growing up. I had no clue what the Cultural Revolution was until I picked out a random book shortly after my freshman year in college. I was at the airport bookstore in Boston on my first flight ever to China in 1995. That book was called "Wild Swans" and it's the catalyst to what sparked my interest in learning about mainland China and modern Chinese history.

I wasn't born in China so I will never fully understand...but I can definitely appreciate the emotions of what it must be like for someone to have grown up during the Cultural Revolution, find success in America and return to her hometown to witness the "unimaginable progress" Joan speaks of when she describes China today.

Here's a line that really got to me:

For one thing, the Chinese are a proud people. They want freedom and greater rights, but they know they must fight for them from within.

I couldn't agree more. Tackling torches, Jack Cafferty and boycott bandwagon is not going to do a damn thing but accelarate a downward spiral on both sides. You already see it happening and to be honest with you, we've got months left to go and I'm experiencing a really bad case of anti-everything fatigue. From both sides. Plenty of negative energy to go around, you won't see it here.

It's been 13 years since my first trip to China. I was a 19 year old Chinese-American girl with no clue. Born in Taiwan to a family with 300 years of history there. Raised in the U.S. since age 2. Didn't learn how to speak Mandarin until college (still not good at it) and just assumed that China was a scary Communisty country where people were opressed and clueless about the outside world. That was me in 1995. This is me today. What you read on this blog, what you hear in my podcasts, what you see evolving with The China Business Network. It's all an effort on my part to take what I've learned and build a bridge for both sides. It's a culmination of 13 years of my own journey learning about China for myself. It started with a plane ride. So for those who don't get it. What's your excuse? Just sayin'.

Joan Chen is harmonious. She rocks.