Nien Cheng

  b. 1915; d. 2009 | Chinese political dissident

At The Bottom

— 1966

She was subjected to solitary confinement, a sparse diet, interrogation and even torture.

In the middle of the night in August 1966, Nien Cheng was awakened by more than three dozen Red Guard officers at her home in Shanghai.  It was the first year of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and the communist regime had just initiated a campaign known as “The Destruction of the Four Olds,” which aimed to eradicate old customs, culture, habits and ideas. In Shanghai, hundreds of “bourgeois” defenders of the old order were being murdered, and hundreds more would take their own lives.  In the midst of all this, Nien Cheng demanded to know why the Red Guard was at her home, and she insisted on seeing their search warrant.  The Red Guard brushed her aside, insisting that the constitution — one of the “old” things — was irrelevant and that “only the teachings of our Great Leader Chairman Mao” would be recognized.  After vandalizing her home — smashing furniture, shredding and burning books, and destroying paintings — the Guard arrested her and brought her to a prison.  For the next six years, she was subjected to solitary confinement, a sparse diet, interrogation and even torture.  All this was because the Chinese government erroneously believed that Cheng — a manager at the Shell Oil Company office in Shanghai — was a British spy.