- 您在位置 #1136-1139的标注 | 添加于 2016年2月25日星期四 上午1:18:19In old China, women who lost their husbands lost their own identity. They became virtually nonpersons, subjected to ridicule and gossip by the neighbors. Although the new marriage law passed by the People’s Government in 1952 protected women in general and forbade discrimination, the old prejudice against widows and unmarried older women persisted.

- 您在位置 #1312-1320的标注 | 添加于 2016年2月25日星期四 上午1:28:12I sat down by the dining table and looked around the room. 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. The gleam of the polished blackwood table was richer than ever. The white lacquered screen with its inlaid ivory figures stood proudly in one corner, a symbol of fine craftsmanship. The antique porcelain plates and vases on their blackwood stands were placed at just the right angle to show off their beauty. Even the curtains hung completely evenly, not a fraction out of line. In the glass cabinet were white jade figures, a rose quartz incense burner, and ornaments of other semiprecious stones that I had lovingly collected over the years. They had been beautifully carved in intricate designs by the hands of skilled artists. Now my eyes caressed them to bid them farewell. Having heard from Winnie that the painter Lin Fengmian was in serious trouble, I knew that his painting of a lady in blue hanging over the sideboard would be ruthlessly destroyed. But what about the other ink-and-brush painting by Qi Baishi? He was a great artist of the traditional style. Because of his having been a carpenter in early life, he was honored by the Communist Party.

- 您在位置 #1436-1442的标注 | 添加于 2016年2月25日星期四 上午1:34:53thought of switching off the radio, but it was out of my reach unless I climbed over the mountain of debris in the middle of the room. I looked at what had happened to my things hopelessly but indifferently. They belonged to a period of my life that had abruptly ended when the Red Guards entered my house. Though I could not see into the future, I refused to look back. I supposed the Red Guards had enjoyed themselves. Is it not true that we all possess some destructive tendencies in our nature? The veneer of civilization is very thin. Underneath lurks the animal in each of us. If I were young and had had a working-class background, if I had been brought up to worship Mao and taught to believe him infallible, would I not have behaved exactly as the Red Guards had done?

- 您在位置 #1530-1537的标注 | 添加于 2016年2月25日星期四 上午1:38:47“Do you eat tomatoes?” I asked her. “Of course I do!” she said. Tomatoes were common in Shanghai. When the harvest was in, the price dropped to a few cents a catty (a catty being a little over a pound in weight). Every adult and every child in Shanghai ate tomatoes either as fruit or vegetable. “Well, the tomato is a foreign food. It was introduced into China by foreigners. So was the watermelon, brought from Persia over the silk route. As for foreign books, Karl Marx himself was a German. If people didn’t read books by foreigners, there would not have been an international Communist movement. It has never been possible to keep things and ideas locked up within the national boundary of any one country, even in the old days when communication was difficult. Nowadays, it’s even more impossible. I’m pretty sure that by now people all over the world have heard that Chinese high school students are organized as Red Guards.”

- 您在位置 #5409-5419的标注 | 添加于 2016年2月25日星期四 上午2:25:23
My sister-in-law came into the room then to tell me that my taxi to the airport was waiting. When I said goodbye to my brother, I was trembling. I did not know whether it was because I was angry at the terrible system under which we had to live or because I was sad that we could not do anything more effective than blindly resist to maintain our dignity. From inside the taxi, I turned to wave to my brother; he had already gone in. I somehow thought he was disappointed in me. I had not behaved like wise Chinese who “bend with the wind to survive the hurricane.” I went out to Arizona to see my brother again in March 1984, when he came to the Thunderbird Campus of the American Graduate School of International Management as an exchange professor from the Institute of Foreign Trade in Beijing. I found that he was now an old man suffering from emphysema, looking a good ten years older than his age. But the twinkle of humor returned to his eyes when he told me that at last he had been reinstated as a professor of economics and had come to the United States to lecture on China’s new economic policy. When I asked him what would happen when the Party’s policy swung left again, as it had done from left to right and right to left like a pendulum for over thirty years, he took a deep breath and sighed.

- 您在位置 #6211-6214的标注 | 添加于 2016年2月25日星期四 上午2:40:38Was I being hysterical? Had prison life made me oversuspicious and sensitive? I examined everything again carefully. As I touched each item of her clothing, I became more and more convinced that she had indeed died. The message came to me clear and strong that she was no longer in this world. Yet I needed concrete proof because I was accustomed to dealing with facts and was suspicious of feelings I could not understand or explain.

- 您在位置 #6245-6249的标注 | 添加于 2016年2月25日星期四 上午2:45:34Throughout the years of my imprisonment, I had turned to God often and felt His presence. In the drab surroundings of the gray cell, I had known magic moments of transcendence that I had not experienced in the ease and comfort of my normal life. My belief in the ultimate triumph of truth and goodness had been restored, and I had renewed courage to fight on. My faith had sustained me in these the darkest hours of my life and brought me safely through privation, sickness, and torture. At the same time, my suffering had strengthened my faith and made me realize that God was always there. It was up to me to come to Him.

- 您在位置 #9686-9688的标注 | 添加于 2016年2月25日星期四 上午3:36:33After all, it was the law of nature that the old should die first and the young should live on, not the other way around. Also I felt sad because I was leaving forever the country of my birth. It was a break so final that it was shattering. God knows how hard I tried to remain true to my country. But I failed utterly through no fault of my own.