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Flying High Out of A Tibetan Valley

by Liming Jing

354 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); illustrated; black & white photos; catalogue #00-0201; ISBN 1-55212-535-1; US$28.00, C$33.85, EUR22.10, £16.00

A narrative autobiography about Liming Jingís struggle to discover her independence and fulfill her dreams in the hostile and unforgiving regime of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward and Ten Years of Madness. Historic black & white photos throughout.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpts      review      catalogue info

About the Book Flying High Out of a Tibetan Valley is Liming Jing's autobiography about her struggle to discover her independence and to fulfill her dreams in the hostile and unforgiving regime of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward (1958-1960) and Cultural Revolution(1966-1976). Liming Jing grew up in an isolated Tibetan town in Sichuan Province during the hunger and madness of Mao's Great Leap Forward and his Cultural Revolution. At the age of 12, Liming Jing witnessed a struggle meeting in which her parents were falsely and vindictively denounced as enemies of the state and repeatedly ostracized and beaten in a Maoist indoctrinated frenzy. Soon both her parents were jailed and she lived alone. She was prevented from doing what she liked best - playing Ping-Pong and performing in a dance group. In high school and in the countryside as an Educated Youth, Liming Jing was chastised and ostracized for her ambition to become a translator and to fly high out of a Tibetan valley as a world citizen. This was only the beginning of Liming Jing's odyssey. Her level of exasperation accelerated as she was stymied at every subsequent personal milestone: education, relationships, travel, and professional. Her hopes unwittingly built with the encouraging words by manipulators only to be dashed upon the rocks of guilt by family history. What must she do to attain her dreams? Would China allow her the dignity and honor to blossom as an individual or must she acquiesce to its spiritless political orthodoxy? The book is, nevertheless, profoundly optimistic. Like her father, Liming never loses her love of her homeland, even when they are victims of its most malignant twentieth century cruelties (Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward and his Cultural Revolution). Liming's story personifies the adage: "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Triumphantly, Liming Jing has battled political and social adversity.

About the Author Liming Jing grew up in a Tibetan valley during the upheaval of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and received her BA and MA during Deng Xiaopingís economic reform. She was an associate professor of English at Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, China. Right now she is working as an ESL instructor at Saint Leo University, Florida, USA and freelance translator and interpreter. Regarding herself as a world citizen, Liming Jing has bounced back and forth between China and America to do her bit to make this world a better place. Through her hard work and persistence, her childhood dreams of becoming a writer and translator have come true. Liming Jing has written and translated ten books. Some of her translations are Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle, Milan Kundera's Life Is Elsewhere and The Joke and Ivan Klima's My Merry Mornings. Her books have been published both in Taiwan and Mainland China. She has received awards for her excellence in teaching English as a second language and for her writings and translations as well. The author may be contacted via e-mail at dawnjiejie@yahoo.com

What reviewers are saying about FLYING HIGH OUT OF A TIBETAN VALLEY

China's tragic past comes alive through this personal story

February 8, 2001

Reviewer: R. Kocz from Upstate N Y.

Not long ago the tenth anniversary of the events at Tianamen Square passed. The brutal force with which the Chinese authorities dispatched the student demonstrators reminded us once again, that in spite of the strides the country is making towards a full-scale free market economy, China is still locked in the paranoid mentality of a totalitarian communist state.

Certainly the recent actions of the Chinese government against the Falun Gong movement underscore the fact that the repressive methods of the past have not at all been abandoned.

To an average American, comfortable in his stable and prosperous democracy, China is a paradox: at once a place teeming with stylish young capitalists sporting cellular phones and a domain to a grim regime where only the opinions sanctioned by the authorities are permitted.

Why this strange amalgam of communism and capitalism? Flying High out of a Tibetan Valley does not attempt to answer this question, as that is not its goal. Yet in its stunning story of one woman's courage in the face of the darkest years of this country's history, the book provides a rich background to understanding what China is today.

When I picked up this book, I felt there would be little in terms of surprise between its covers. Having spent my childhood and early teenage years in a communist country myself (Poland), I was confident that I knew what the atrocities and hardship ofthat abominable system were. My grandfather was persecuted by the authorities in the 1950's for refusing to participate in farm collectivization, and my father was active in the opposition to the communist government since his early twenties.

So I grew up hearing stories of what happened to people who stepped out against communists, about demonstrations in the 50's, 60's, and 70's where at the command of the Worker's Party, workers were shot by the military or the riot police squads. And about so many people who were sent to the Gulags in Siberia. Most never came back. In addition to it all, I saw some movies about China and the terrible things that happened there during the worst years of communism (the movie "Fly a Blue Kite" comes to mind specifically).

Thus, I assumed that when I would read this book, I'd read what I already knew. I was in for quite a surprise. Not a hundred historical books or political analyses could say so eloquently, and with such a deep feeling, as what Mrs. Jing did on the 300+ pages of Flying High out of a Tibetan Valley.

She wrote a marvelous book that brought me close to those terrible times like nothing else before. She writes with passion and intense personal feeling, and in this fashion, she lets the reader feel her humiliation, her anger, and her courage. And this was the communism that I never experienced. I was angrier at that bankrupt ideology than ever before, even in Poland. It's difficult sometimes to believe how cruel human beings can be to one another.

The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution definitely plumbed the depths of "human inhumanity" like hardly any event before, save perhaps for the Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese.

Flying High out of a Tibetan Valley is a book that every American should read so that he may learn to appreciate the freedoms and comforts of this country. Here, the fact that one can criticize his government, tell ajoke about the President, or join virtually any political movement, really goes unnoticed.

We do need to be reminded that in anot-too-distant history, such freedoms were unthinkable in China. And to some degree still are.

Remek Kocz

Thank you Liming

February 8, 2001

Reviewer: Merle Romain from Florida

A generous sharing of the experiences of a very courageous woman. Brings a personal view, from the countryside, of the effect of Mao's "madness" on China's society. Liming gives us all this without losing control of her emotions. She is a survivor and an inspiration to all women. A good companion to Nien Cheng's _"Life and Death in Shanghai".

Merle Romain

A letter to the author from Rodney Clarken, Professor at Nothern Michigan University

You are to be commended on your remarkable will and perseverance which have helped you overcome obstacles that few people can imagine, let alone experience. Each time I read your story I am reminded of how fortunate I am as well as the millions who have grown up in societies that have taken justice and liberty for granted.

We have much to learn from your lessons and life. May you be enabled to continue making contributions to the betterment of the world and world citizenship. Your book is a noble gift to us all.

Sample Excerpt

Mao's Great Leap Forward had failed and more than 40 million people had starved to death. Mao had been criticized for his disastrous Great Leap Forward by some top officials in the central government. To restore his power and reputation and to get rid of those who criticized him, the weakened Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, which would destroy not only China's economy but also basic human relationships. Chinese people would suffer another Mao nightmare after the huge famine of the Great Leap Forward.

"Red in the East rises the sun, China has brought forth a Mao Zedong . . ." The song, broadcast by a big loudspeaker, echoed over Luhua Town of Heishui County.

It was March 1967. Heishui, like all other places in China, was in the beginning of Chairman Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which was supposed to save the country and the Party from the capitalism. "Red in the East rises the sun, China has brought forth a Mao Zedong . . ." Since the Cultural Revolution had started in 1966, almost every day at 6:00 a.m., the Heishui County Revolutionary Committee broke the thin air stillness of the morning with this song praising Mao Zedong. Mao was the rising Sun of the East.

Today the song was followed by an announcement, "Attention please, Revolutionary Comrades! Today, March 15, 1967, at nine o'clock in the morning, in the auditorium of the County Revolutionary Committee, there will be a public meeting to struggle against Capitalist Roaders, traitors, foreign agents, and reactionary bourgeois academic authorities . . . "

So, class enemies would be denounced at this meeting. Class enemies included people with power who had been accused of taking the capitalist road instead of following Mao's leftist policies, and Party officials who had been suspected of having betrayed Party secrets while imprisoned by the Kuomintang before 1949. People who had been suspected of having connections to foreign countries or Taiwan, and intellectuals who had been thought to spread bourgeois ideas, were all considered dangerous class enemies.

It was a cold morning. Winter snow still covered the mountains and the ground outside. The thin clean air of Heishui County was covered with thick gray clouds that were rolled along by the wind like a child pushing a small iron hoop with a stick.

At 7:30 I was still half asleep and buried warmly under a heavy quilt. I didn't need to get up early to go to school, because for months all schools in the whole country had been closed for the Cultural Revolution. So, in those winter days I often slept late. It was better to stay with my dreams of a handsome young prince than to go out and wander around the frigid town reading the Cultural Revolution posters.

For over 5,000 years written Chinese has consisted of brief pictures or characters which represent words. Drawing Chinese characters well is a goal of all Chinese students. Chairman Mao in June 1966 drew a big-character poster that said, "Bombard the Capitalist Headquarters." Students all across the country enthusiastically responded to Chairman Mao's call to participate in the Cultural Revolution. They made speeches in the streets and put up Big-Character Posters on walls of government buildings and schools to denounce Capitalist Roaders, Reactionary Bourgeois Academic Authorities (teachers and school masters) and all those who sabotaged workers and peasants' efforts to build communism. Chairman Mao's new revolution left no time for studying science, math, and the Chinese language"

Some of Heishui's Big-Character Posters said "Revolution is rebellion against capitalists and the spirit of Mao Zedong Thought is rebellion." "If you don't rebel, you are a revisionist." "Throw hand grenades for revolutionary battles." "Turn the old world upside down." "The more disorder in the world, the better." Every day new Big-Character Posters drawn in bold strokes of black ink on large white sheets of paper appeared around Luhua Town denouncing a newly discovered enemy. Why should I go outside early in the morning to read pitiless condemnations of my teachers, my father and his colleagues? I was sleeping in the outer room of our small two-room home. In another month I would be twelve years old. My mom and dad were cooking rice porridge in the inside room. They had already come through my room several times to go outside and return to the other room. My unremembered dream world had slipped away, but I didn't quite want to leave the warmth that my body created under the quilt. Suddenly, without knocking, someone opened the outside door. Slipping the quilt off my face and opening my eyes just a little, I saw standing in the middle of the room two strong young men wearing green helmets and red arm bands. Their unsmiling faces were vaguely familiar. Revolutionary Rebels! These fierce adult fanatics wanted to destroy anyone and anything capitalist.

Review

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