Guo Sheng: Tears Of The Moon

Reviewed by MARGIE THOMSON

Since White Swans, a flood of books has come out detailing the experiences of China's people during the serial upheavals of the 20th century. Each contains its share of horrors, but few are as relentlessly distressing as this very personal account, told by a remarkable woman who, strangely enough, now lives in Auckland.

This last fact imbues her story with a great sense of immediacy for New Zealand readers: the things in here happened not just to unknown people far away, but to someone may pass on the street - and so this book leads us to see our own world differently, its many layers emphasised.

The thread that holds the story together is Sheng's love affair with Yee Bing, who she met at university in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. It's a Romeo and Juliet affair. Yee Bing's parents were Red Guards, Mao's ideologues and agents, while Sheng's family, branded counter-revolutionaries, were mercilessly persecuted by the Red Guards. All their material possessions were taken and destroyed, her grandparents killed, the rest of her family beaten, raped, publicly humiliated, and exiled to the countryside where they faced more of the same.

As the story of this tragic love unfolds, Sheng involves us in flashbacks which fill in the dark corners of her own and China's history.

She shows us with horrifying clarity that the legacy of the Cultural Revolution is a complete lack of trust. Every character is tainted or wounded by history.

As late as 1983, Sheng is labelled a counter-revolutionary, beaten, imprisoned and given electric shock treatment for speaking out against the "Great, Glorious, Right Communist Party of China".

How will China walk towards the future when divisions and wounds, both physical and psychological, still gape? On the other hand, the tremendous, optimistic will to survive, to better yourself, to work on behalf of the community, are equally present in Sheng's story.

There is a melodramatic quality to the writing that reminds me of old films, but these are people in extremis, with all nicety stripped away. People collapse in hysterical tears, suddenly faint, scream abuse in totally overblown language, speak and write in capital letters ("Life and Death Struggling Class Enemies") and are rendered absolutely speechless. Sheng gives us a new way of thinking about good and evil, pain and courage.

Penguin, $27.95