Witnessing History: One Chinese Woman's Fight for Freedom - Hardcover

Zeng, Jennifer

3.96

46 ratings by Goodreads

9781569474211: Witnessing History: One Chinese Woman's Fight for Freedom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1569474214 ISBN 13: 9781569474211

Publisher: Soho Press, 2006

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"A glimpse not just of the true face of the Chinese government but of the threat holiness poses to the powerful. . . . A useful counterbalance to the reckless enthusiasm of our leaders and media for the Chinese miracle. . . . Should be mandatory reading."-Sydney Morning Herald

Zheng (Jennifer) Zeng was a graduate in science from Beijing University. She was a wife, a mother, and a Communist Party member. But because she followed a spiritual practice called Falun Gong, her life in China was shattered. Adhering to the practice's simple tenets of Truth, Compassion, and Forbearance, she was amazed that the Party would institute a crack down, arrest her and demand that she recant. After twice being held at a detention center and refusing, she was sentenced without trial to reeducation through forced labor. Her "enlightenment"-in part undertaken by fellow prisoners incarcerated for prostitution, pornography and drug addiction-took the form of beatings, torture with electric prods, starvation, sleep deprivation, and forced labor. She was compelled to knit for days at a time, her hands bleeding, to produce goods contracted for sale in the US market. Many Falun Gong practitioners died under the harsh conditions. Zheng Zeng was lucky.

Thousands of others remain deprived by an oppressive Chinese government of their freedom of speech and assembly and the freedom to believe as they choose. This is the testament to her ordeal and theirs.

Jennifer Zeng was born in Sichuan Province, China, in 1966. She now lives in Australia.

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About the Author:

Jennifer Zeng was born in Sichuan Province, China in 1966. A graduate of the presitgious Beijing University, she was arrested for practicing Falun Gong in 2000, after which she was sentenced to reeducation through forced labor. A year later she recanted, and was released on April 3, 2001. She fled to Australia where she was granted refugee status on July 1, 2003.

From Publishers Weekly:

For Westerners, one of the most perplexing recent obsessions of Communist China is the mass persecution of hundreds of thousands of mostly middle-aged, middle-class devotees of Falun Gong, a system of exercise and meditation on "Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance." Equally puzzling is the well-documented determination of practitioners to defy the notoriously repressive government. While this memoir doesn't provide definitive answers, it does shed light on the issues and offer a hair-raising first-person look at China's brutal concentration camps (Zeng spent a year in one), where prisoners are beaten, electrocuted, deprived of sleep, forced into hard labor and subjected to constant "reform" propaganda, aka brainwashing. Zeng, an investment consultant, turned to Falun Gong after the difficult birth of her daughter and a botched medical procedure left her weakened and depressed. The practice improved her health and outlook almost immediately. Like other practitioners, Zeng couldn't believe the government would go as far as it did to crack down on something so seemingly harmless and beneficial, until she found herself under arrest in 2000. After stubborn resistance for a year, Zeng finally pretended to "reform," and when released, managed to escape to Australia. China watchers should be attentive to this simply written but invaluable report from the front. (May)
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