Blood Letters

February 1, 2018
A profoundly grim, sanguinary account of the suffering of a young woman during the days of Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution.Lian Xi (World Christianity/Duke Divinity School; Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China, 2010, etc.) begins with the 1965 sentencing of Lin Zhao, a poet and journalist fighting "the dark forces of repression and injustice." She was executed in 1968; by law, her family then had to pay a five-cent fee for the bullet. Lin Zhao had been in political trouble through most of her youth. She had a constitutional inability to lie low and instead wrote fiery poems and letters to the press and smeared images of Mao with her own blood. Compounding all of her suffering was tuberculosis. She spent time in the prison hospital, though she sometimes refused treatment. She often wrote poems and letters in her own blood. As the author reveals, she had initially been a communist, then became a devout Christian, finding in that religion some context for her suffering--and her suffering was profound: TB, harsh life in a prison cell, and physical abuse by guards and other prisoners. Readers will be astonished that she survived so long and was able to hold fast to her opposition. Most of her writing survived in government files, and Lian Xi--determined and imaginative--read her works and interviewed key figures, creating an effective tribute to a remarkable human being. The text is academic in structure (including more than 60 pages of bibliography and endnotes), but the author's diction will appeal to general readers. He allows his own voice to emerge occasionally, most notably at the end, where he writes about his hotel room, not far from where Lin Zhao was imprisoned.A moving account of astonishing human courage in the leering face of human cruelty.

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February 15, 2018

The daughter of a banker and Communist activist, Peng Lingzhao (1932-68) went to an elite Christian mission school near Shanghai in the midst of China's decades-long civil war between the Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, and the insurgent Communists, led by Mao Zedong. She grew increasingly enchanted with communist ideology and in 1949 secretly joined the Chinese Community Party at 16, adopting the name Lin Zhao. Lian Xi (Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China) describes Zhao's fevered idealism; attending a Communist-sponsored school where students were trained to be "fomenters of the revolution" that had begun in earnest with Mao's collectivist land reforms and mass killings. But when Zhao soured on Mao's totalitarian rule and political persecutions, she was branded a "counterrevolutionary" and imprisoned along with millions of other dissidents. Zhao's prison letters and poetry (much of it written in blood), along with her rediscovered Christian faith--which the author deems the "backbone of her rebellion"--buoyed her amid torture, deprivation, and ultimately execution. VERDICT Lian Xi honors this spirited and courageous young woman with an enlightening biography of her life and troubled times.--Chad Comello, Morton Grove P.L., IL

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