She embodies the spirit and perseverance of China’s “last nobleman”. –Luo Zhiyuan
Zheng Nian, formerly Yao Nian Deceive, was born in Beijing in 1915 to a Japanese student who served as a high-ranking official in the Beiyang government. Zheng Nian graduated from Yanjing University and studied in England in the 1930s at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Zheng Nian later married Zheng Kangqi, a Chinese student who was also studying in England. By the time the couple returned home from their studies, the war against Japan had already broken out and the couple defected to Chongqing, where Zheng Kangqi joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was stationed in Australia for seven years.
After 1949, they stayed in Shanghai instead of Taiwan, and in 1957, after her husband’s death, Zheng Nian succeeded him in Shanghai as an assistant to the British General Manager of Shell Oil Company, where he worked until the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution. The pseudonym “Zheng Nian” was given in memory of her late husband, who died in 1957.
“One hot evening, the hostess sat in the quiet study of her home reading a newspaper. Under the light of a table lamp, a soft sofa, a brocade cushion, and a bookshelf with Chinese and English books on the wall. The maid came to announce a visitor, and then, in the parlor, the host and the guest chatted while the maid brought tea served on fine china and thin English-style sandwiches ……” It was Shanghai in the summer of 1966, and Zheng Nian still maintained the lifestyle of a famous lady.
The family’s grandfather was a prominent figure in modern Chinese history. As a result, they had a rich family fortune, with deposits in banks both at home and abroad. This is also why they were able to maintain that lifestyle in 1966 – a separate three-story home, male and female servants and cooks and gardeners. In mainland banks alone, she had tens of thousands of dollars in savings.
However, with the advent of the Cultural Revolution, Zheng Nian’s family, like so many others, was plunged into a terrible disaster. First the family was ransacked and destroyed by the Red Guards, then Zheng Nian was arrested and imprisoned, and her daughter, Zheng Meiping, already a famous actress at the Shanghai Film Studio, was in an even worse situation, beaten to death alive when she lost contact with her mother. In fact, this book was written by Zheng Nian as a tearful mother to her beloved daughter after her arrest.
For seven years in the infamous “First Detention Center,” Zheng Nian had to face all kinds of Nazi-style brutality – starvation, handcuffing, kicking, punching and psychological abuse – on her own, to the point where she was bruised and trapped internally and externally. But Zheng Nian fought hard to defend her personal freedom and dignity, refusing the trumped-up charge of “espionage.
Intellectually and morally, she overwhelmed her interrogators, and was able to achieve some partial victory. At the bottom of the confessions, which were usually signed “criminal”, Zheng Nian took the trouble to add the words “who has not committed any crime” before “criminal” each time. After several rewrites of her account, the paper she was given was finally no longer marked “criminal:”.
She even refused to be released unless the authorities apologized to her. This is an extremely rare scenario. She refused the so-called release resolution. She demanded that she be declared innocent at all, and that an apology be made, publicly in the Shanghai and Beijing newspapers. Such demands can only make the dictators laugh. They certainly will never understand the beliefs and values behind such insistence. Yet this is a demonstration of the great character of Chinese women who resisted tyranny. Her English-language autobiography, Life and Death in Shanghai, which traces how intellectual ideals were crushed by politics, was a worldwide sensation.
“After the end of the Cultural Revolution, Zheng Nian became a target of the United Front and was given the opportunity to attend various women’s events, as well as privileges such as shopping in internal stores. Zhu Dike recalls: “Between 1973 and 1977, I often saw that ‘nameless woman’ named Yao Nian Deceive (Zheng Nian), going in and out of the alley alone, graceful and elegantly dressed. Her solitary and haughty expression left a deep impression on me.”
In 1980, Zheng Nian applied to leave the country in the name of visiting his sister in the United States. Although she was 65 years old when she went to the United States, Zheng Nian quickly adapted herself to the new lifestyle and environment: such as driving on the highway, supermarket shopping and automatic bank deposit machines …… Of course, she does not deny that “…… when the sunset But she still “woke up the next morning on time, optimistic and energetic to welcome the new day God had given me”.
In 1989, Cheng Nai Shan, the Chinese translator of “Shanghai Life and Death”, had her first close encounter with Zheng Nian in Washington. The 74-year-old Zheng Nian drove a white Japanese car, wearing a lotus-colored silk shirt with ribbons on the chest and gray silk pants, black flat-heeled pointed leather shoes, a silver hair, very Shanghai …… so that Cheng Nai Shan exclaimed: “She is so beautiful, especially the eyes, although through the wind and frost, the eyes are still The eyes are still bright and sharp, but the bags under the eyes are very sunken, that is loaded with the remains of the past sadness it!
“Will forever leave the homeland where I was born and raised, my heart is broken, completely broken. Only the heavens know that I have tried a thousand times to be faithful to my country, but in the end I have failed completely, but I am blameless.” So writes Zheng Nian at the end of his book, Shanghai Life and Death. When the book was first published in the 1980s, it was an instant hit around the world, including mainland China. But with the passage of time and other factors, it seems to have faded out of the public eye and was never published again in mainland China.
And after leaving Shanghai, Zheng Nian never returned to China. But she never stopped caring about her country. In November 2009, Zheng Nian died at the age of 94 at her home in Washington, D.C., after a long illness.
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