Leaf In The Bitter Wind

Download or read book A Leaf in the Bitter Wind written by Ting-xing Ye and published by Doubleday Canada. This book was released on 1997 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning 35 years, this enthralling memoir chronicles the life of a woman, a survivor, who has been buffeted by the winds of history. Ting-zing Ye was born in Shanghai, the fouth child of a factory owner who had his factory taken from him. By the age of thirteen, her parents were dead. The Cultural Revolution then tore Ye's family apart. Writing with grim irony, she offers a riveting account of her work on a prison farm, where, as the child of a "capitalist," she was continually subjected to humiliating psychological torture. She then wryly relates her change in fortune when she found herself accepted into Beijing University and eventually, in a consummate irony, was offered a job in the Chinese Secret Police. Managing to get herself reassigned to the Foreign Ministry as a translator, the girl from the prison farm found herself translating for the delegations of such dignitaries as Queen Elizabeth, Ronald Reagan and Imelda Marcos. In a moving and dramatic final section, Ye writes about her feudal-style marriage, her falling in love with a Canadian, and her eventual defection to Canada. Her former husband has refused her all access to her daughter and concealed the child's whereabouts. Now a Canadian citizen, Ye continues to attempt to contact her child, hoping to bring her to Canada, where she too may be free.