Book description
In 1972, Jan Wong became one of only two Westerners admitted to
Beijing University at the height of the Cultural Revolution. One day,
a student, Yin Luoyi, sought Jan's assistance in going to the United
States. Wong, then a starry-eyed Maoist, reported Yin to the
authorities. Yin promptly disappeared. Now, thirty-three years later,
Wong returns to Beijing to search for the woman who has haunted her
conscience. She hopes to apologise, perhaps somehow to try to make
amends. At the very least, she wants to find out whether Yin has
survived. Preoccupied by the past, fascinated by China's present and
future, Jan Wong searches out old friends, foes and comrades in this
half-familiar city, finally uncovering the truth about the woman she
wronged. Chinese Whispers tells a unique and unforgettable story of
communism and capitalism, of guilt and atonement, of remembering and forgetting.
