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Jan Wong
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Publisher | Atlantic Books | ||
ISBN | 978-184354974 | ||
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Jayne
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Synopsis
The distinguished Canadian journalist Jan Wong returned to Beijing with a quest: to confront a secret in her past. She must find someone she betrayed in 1973, and whose life she is certain she has ruined forever. The result is the mirror image of Wild Swans.In the early 1970s, Jan Wong travelled to China to become one of only two Westerners permitted to study at Beijing University. One day a fellow student, Yin Luoyi, asked for help in getting to America. Wong, then a starry-eyed Maoist, immediately reported Yin to the authorities. Thirty-three years later, Jan Wong returns to begin her search for the person who haunts her conscience. She wants to apologise, to somehow make amends. At the very least, she wants to know if Yin survived.As Jan Wong hunts through the city, she finds herself travelling back through the decades, back to her experiences of the Cultural Revolution. She has changed, of course, but not as much as Beijing. One of the world's most ancient cities is now one of its most modern. In this real-life detective story, Jan Wong searches out old friends and acquaintances in this now unfamiliar city, uncovering the truth about the woman she wronged.
Review
This amazing book takes the author back to find her friend from the University of Beijing some 30+ years after leaving the country.
She returns because she wants to get forgiveness from her friend Yin Luoyi who she believes she betrayed to the Mao Communists and that Lu Yin has suffered because of her betrayal.
Jan Wong went back to Beijing long before her boys were born but this time she is going with her husband, a native chinese man, and their children.
She experiences a very different Beijing where they are preparing for the 2008 olympics with pulling down the slums and building lots of neat homes in their place. She does meet some old friends and comrades in this city of a thousand changes and finally tracks down Yin and discovers that she was only 1 of 25 people who had reported her friend for wanting to go to America.
'Chinese Whispers' tells this unique and unforgetable story of communism and capitalism, of the guilt felt by Jan and the forgiveness of Yin.
I found the book hard to read but it was made easier by the maps of the area at the start of the book.
Jan Wong was one of two westoners admitted to Beijing University at the height of the Cultural Revelation and became a much-acclaimed reporter for the Toronto Globe and mail from 1988-1994.
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