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| Genre/Form: | Biography |
|---|---|
| Additional Physical Format: | Online version: Wu, Hongda Harry. Bitter winds. New York : J. Wiley, c1994 (OCoLC)621824058 |
| Named Person: | Hongda Harry Wu; Hongda Harry Wu; Hongda Harry Wu |
| Material Type: | Biography, Internet resource |
| Document Type: | Book, Internet Resource |
| All Authors / Contributors: |
Hongda Harry Wu; Carolyn Wakeman |
| ISBN: | 0471556459 9780471556459 0471114251 9780471114253 |
| OCLC Number: | 28025575 |
| Notes: | "A Robert L. Bernstein book." Includes index. |
| Description: | viii, 290 p. : ill. ; 25 cm. |
| Responsibility: | Harry Wu and Carolyn Wakeman. |
| More information: |
Abstract:
From the tough peasants and petty criminals imprisoned with him, like chicken thief Big Mouth Xing, he learned the harsh lessons of survival. Driven by incessant hunger, he became expert at scavenging for edible weeds in the barren camp fields and capturing snakes and frogs in the irrigation ditches. Reduced at one point to a walking skeleton, he took part in elaborate "food imagining" sessions with his squad mates in the barracks at night. In the crucible of the nightmarish Qinghe prison farm, he watched as, night after night, prisoners succumbed to disease and starvation to be buried in unmarked graves outside the camp walls.
Throughout this stunning chronicle are moving stories of the prisoners who became Wu's trusted friends. The gentle, lute-playing Ao, unblinking in his insistence on the dignity of humanity, serves as a beacon in the moral abyss of the camps. Handsome and virile Lu, tormented by unfulfilled longing for a woman's touch, is driven to insanity and finally suicide. Buffeted by the worst horrors of the Chinese communist tragedy, these poignant figures provide a rare, detailed portrait of the depths of human despair. Released from prison in 1979, Harry Wu was eventually allowed to leave China for the United States. But his story does not end there. Determined to expose the truth of the gulag, he returned to China in 1991 with a "60 Minutes" news crew. Posing as a U.S. businessman buying prison goods, he risked his life by smuggling a hidden camera into the camps and capturing on film, for the first time, haunting images of life behind those forbidding walls.
Bitter Winds is an invaluable personal record of the persistent, barbaric abuses of human freedom in our time. An inspiring, gripping story of one man's indomitable will to live, it is a testimony to the extraordinary courage of the human spirit.
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Related Subjects:(11)
- China -- Politics and government -- 1949-
- Wu, Hongda Harry.
- Political prisoners -- China -- Biography.
- Wu, Hongda Harry, -- 1937-
- Politieke gevangenen.
- Autobiographie.
- Erlebnisbericht.
- Politischer Gefangener.
- China.
- Labour camps
- China
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