ABSTRACT
https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315288291/a1eedcaa-57fc-4fca-9a39-2ae5e50fda7a/content/fig9_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Hu Ping (b. 1948) and Zhang Shengyou, also interviewed in this book, are among the foremost reportage writers in present-day China. Hu Ping grew up in an inland province, Jiangxi, where he attended school in the provincial capital of Nanchang. Because his grandfather was labeled a landlord and his father a "rightist," he was discriminated against in school and was initially excluded from the Red Guards. As Mao launched the attack on the power-holders, he joined the rebel faction and regarded it as an opportunity to show his devotion to the revolution. Eager to participate in Mao's review of the Red Guards in Tiananmen Square on 18 October 1966, he hid in a train and sneaked into a truck to Beijing. Two years later, back in Nanchang in September 1968, he was wrongly accused of being involved in a so-called Anti-Communist Nationalist Salvation Army. He was beaten and interrogated for five days and five nights straight and then was placed in a cell whose prisoners could be called out to be shot at any time. Throughout his fifteen-month imprisonment he was locked in heavy fetters, which forced him to sit and sleep with his legs bent. He has been unable to correct this distorted posture, a permanent memento of his horrible experience.
