Single Tear

by Wu Ningkun and Ningkun Wu

Book Overview

Offers a firsthand account of life in China, from the beginning of communism through the Cultural Revolution, by an American-educated professor who was subjected to manifold hardships by the brutal... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0871134942
• ISBN13: 9780871134943
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 367 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Depiction of Life in Post-1949 China

Wu Ningkun's "A Single Tear" is an excellent look at a young Chinese man whose decision to return to China from America after the 1949 Mao Zedong revolution has lasting and potentially tragic implications for both him and his family. Like many Chinese who emigrated to other parts of the world after WWII, Wu believes that China will be able to enter a better, prosperous and independent phase with the new Mao regime. Although quickly disillusioned, Wu and his family remain, subject to imprisonment, deprivation, and humiliation, especially during the infamous "Cultural Revolution" of the 1960s. By the time of Mao's death in the 1970s, the Wu family has been moved -- separately and together -- from city to country and back again, persecuted for their religious beliefs (Christian), and distrustful of neighbors and friends with the constant denunciations that have become standard. This book will show you what I have heard firsthand in China: the destruction of the intellectuals and "old" by a new generation with no sense of the past. Very moving and inspirational.

Wonderful memoir; well painted portrait about Mao's China

This is a very well written memoir by a husband and wife, about their life in communist China in the 50's and 60's, in which they survived prison, hunger, separation, to name a few. In one part of the book, she tells about how she was assigned to a job post by the government, away from her baby. Since she wouldn't be able to breastfeed, she had to buy milk on the black market! There were no luxuries such as going to the grocery store to buy baby formula. And yet, she deals with it and copes! That's not the worst of what they had to go through! This couple sets the definition for strength of charactor. Very inspiring and enriching book.

One Very Sad and Disturbing Story that Must be Read

"A Single Tear" is the tragic story of a admirable but naive Chinese patriot who made perhaps the worst personal decision possible this century -- choosing to return to China after the civil war ended instead of remaining in the US. The anecdotes of the insanity and chaos that plagued China for the quarter of a century or so from 1950 until Mao's death are gripping and disturbing; If they did not actually occur and were not documented, they would have seemed surreal even in a fictional novel. Ultimate, this is a story about the triumph of the human spirit and the will to survive when tens of millions did not.

The heartbreaking experience of a naive patriot

A naive patriot with zeal and love for his mother land went back to China after the Communist took over in 1949. When he was ready to help build a better country for his own people he was accused of being an American spy. He endured all kinds of torture through the years and came back to tell his heartbreaking experience in this wonderful book. When I first read this book it reminded me the famous novel of "The Tales of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens. But these are true facts and hard evidence of the horror of the time in history.

Beautifully written, heart breaking story about Red China

A Single Tear is a beautifully written book of a heart breakingstory. I cried through the whole book as the story brought back somany terrible memories of growing up in Communist China. ( I should confess now that the author, Prof. Ningkun Wu, PH.D., is my father and that I wrote a few pages in the book).