ABSTRACT
Allyn and Adele Rickett, two American doctoral students on Fullbright scholarships, spent four years in Chinese prisons undergoing thought reform for the “crime” of delivering periodic written observations on life in China to the U.S. Consulate. When the Ricketts crossed from the Communist side of the border into the British colony of Hong Kong after their release in 1954, they were taken aback by the unsympathetic, redbaiting tone of American reporters who crowded around them in search of a story. When Mrs. Rickett affirmed that she did in fact consider the activities they had been engaged in to be spying and that in her view the People’s Government had dealt very leniently with them,
…the expressions on the faces of the reporters quickly changed from enthusiastic welcome to disbelief and then to open hostility…. One asked sneeringly, “If you like China so much, why didn’t you stay there?”1
