This is a first-hand account of China's cultural revolution. Nien Cheng,
an anglophile and fluent English-speaker who worked for Shell in
Shanghai under Mao, was put under house arrest by Red Guards in 1966 and
subsequently jailed. All attempts to make her confess to the charges of
being a British spy failed; all efforts to indoctrinate her were met by
a steadfast and fearless refusal to accept the terms offered by her
interrogators. When she was released from prison she was told that her
daughter had committed suicide. In fact Meiping had been beaten to death
by Maoist revolutionaries.