Quotes from Nien Cheng

When the Communist Army took over China

Articles in the newspapers and talks by leading Maoists encouraged the Red Guards and congratulated them on their vandalism.

Actually I myself was more worried about her status after the Cultural Revolution. If there was to be a new society in which descendants of capitalist families were to become a permanently unprivileged class in China, like the untouchables in India, her life would be unthinkable.

I recited the poem to myself and wondered whether it was really possible for anyone to remain unstained by his environment. It was an idea contrary to Marxism, which held that the environment molded the man.

The veneer of civilization is very thin.

The Proletarian Cultural Revolution, ushered in with so much fanfare and promise for the Chinese masses, had not really changed their lives or given them new opportunities for development. The Chinese people continued to struggle against poverty, shortages, and lack of choice. The Cultural Revolution had merely created a new set of circumstances to which at least the young workers were adjusting with cynicism and audacity.

Our dear comrade Jiang Qing told us, 'Smash to pieces the security and law enforcement agencies.

I have to adhere to the truth," I said.

One of the most ugly aspects of life in Communist China during the Mao Zedong era was the Party's demand that people inform on each other routinely and denounce each other during political campaigns. This practice had a profoundly destructive effect on human relationships. Husbands and wives became guarded with each other, and parents were alienated from their children.

It was strange to realize that after this night I would never see it again as it was. The room had never looked so beautiful as it did at that moment.

I felt again and again the joy she had given me at each stage of her growth and knew I was fortunate to have received from God this very special blessing of a daughter.

Day after day I prayed. More and more I remembered the days of her living, and less and less I dwelled on the tragedy of her dying. Gradually peace came to me, and with it a measure of acceptance.

It's always best to look ahead and not backwards. Possessions are not important. Think of those beautiful porcelain pieces I had. Before they came to me, they had all passed through the hands of many people, surviving wars and natural disasters. I got them only because someone else lost them. While I had them, I enjoyed them; now some other people will enjoy them. Life itself is transitory. Possessions are not important.

But our Great Leader Chairman Mao told us, 'Learn to swim from swimming.' We should learn from taking part in revolutionary activities and from active labor.

Although they both survived this campaign more or less unscathed, they suffered the humiliating experience of having to make self-criticism of their family background, their education abroad, and their outlook on life as reflected in Henry's architectural designs and in their teaching methods.

I had come to realize that the junior officers of the Party often used the exaggerated gesture of rudeness to cover up their feeling of inferiority.

They learned from an early age that the classless society of Communism had a more rigid class system than the despised capitalist society, where a man could move from the lower to the upper class by his own effort.

One of the symptoms of senile dementia is suspicion and the other is paranoia.

A big tree catches the wind' is a true saying.

Since the Red Guards had removed the goods displayed in the windows of the shops, Mao's official portraits were put there. A person walking down the streets in the shopping district would not only be confused by rows of shops bearing the same name, but also had the uncanny feeling of being watched by a hundred faces of Mao.

He laid a hand on my arm and said calmly, with resignation, "Don't get excited and angry. It's useless to get angry with them. They have the last word always. If they say something happened, it happened. It's useless to resist. I've learned this from my personal experience.

Often I look back on the wasted years of the Mao Tze-tung era and the madness of the Cultural Revolution. I feel deeply saddened that so many lives were needlessly sacrificed. I was glad when the Cultural Revolution was officially declared a national catastrophe but I regret the Communist Party leadership's inability or unwillingness to repudiate Mao's policy in explicit terms.

it was wartime. People were being bombed out all over the place. Bad experience is more bearable when you are not the only sufferer.

Without an army, what can politicians achieve?