Flying High Out of A Tibetan Valley

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 Xiaoping’s 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