A Comrade Lost and Found: A Beijing Memoir - Paperback

by Jan Wong (Author)

In the early 1970s, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, Jan Wong traveled from Canada to become one of only two Westerners permitted to study at Beijing University. One day a fellow student, Yin Luoyi, asked for help getting to the United States. Wong, then a starry-eyed Maoist from Montreal, immediately reported her to the authorities, and shortly thereafter Yin disappeared. Thirty-three years later, hoping to make amends, Wong revisits the Chinese capital to search for the person who has haunted her conscience. At the very least, she wants to discover whether Yin survived. But Wong finds the new Beijing bewildering. Phone numbers, addresses, and even names change with startling frequency. In a society determined to bury the past, Yin Luoyi will be hard to find.

As she traces her way from one former comrade to the next, Wong unearths not only the fate of the woman she betrayed but a web that mirrors the strange and dramatic journey of contemporary China and rekindles all of her love for--and disillusionment with--her ancestral land.

Front Jacket

In the early 1970s, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, JanWong traveled from Canada to become one of only two Westerners permitted to study at Beijing University.One day a fellow student, Yin Luoyi, asked for help getting to the United States.Wong, then a starry-eyed Maoist, immediately reported her to the authorities, and shortly thereafter Yin disappeared. Thirty-three years later, hoping to make amends, Wong revisits the Chinese capital, with her husband and teenage sons in tow, to search for the person who has haunted her conscience. At the very least, she wants to discover whether Yin survived. But Wong finds the city bewildering - ancient landmarks have made way for luxury condominiums, state-owned factories for luxury boutiques. In the new Beijing, phone numbers, addresses, and even names change with startling frequency. In a society determined to bury the past, Yin Luoyi will be hard to find.As Wong traces her way from one former comrade to the next, she uncovers not only the fate of the woman she betrayed but a web of fates that mirrors the strange and dramatic journey of contemporary China and rekindles all of her love for and disillusionment with her ancestral land."

Back Jacket

Praise for A Comrade Lost and Found"Essential and compulsively readable. Wong asks the Cultural Revolution's underlying human question--how could so many betray others, and live with it now?--and answers it with a great story: her own." Nicole Mones, author of The Last Chinese Chef

"Jan Wong is the best tour guide a visitor to Beijing could have. She is as generous as she is perceptive, and her sense of humor is so wicked that no absurdity in the modern Chinese capital escapes her. The drama of the search for her lost comrade gives the book the fast pace of a thriller and the razor blade focus of a heartfelt memoir. Jan Wong at her best."--Oliver August, author of Inside the Red Mansion On the Trail of China's Most Wanted Man