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'One of the greatest escape stories I've ever read' Mail on Sunday
An ordinary man's extraordinary escape from Mao's brutal labour
camps Xu Hongci was an ordinary medical student when he was
incarcerated under Mao's regime and forced to spend years of his
youth in China's most brutal labour camps. Three times he tried to
escape. And three times he failed. But, determined, he eventually
broke free, travelling the length of China, across the Gobi desert,
and into Mongolia. It was one of the greatest prison breaks of all
time, during one of the worst totalitarian tragedies of the 20th
Century. This is the extraordinary memoir of his unrelenting
struggle to retain dignity, integrity and freedom; but also the
untold story of what life was like for ordinary people trapped in
the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.
Mao Zedong's labour reform camps were notoriously brutal: modeled
after the Soviet gulag, their inmates were subject to backbreaking
labour, malnutrition, and vindictive wardens. They were thought to
be impossible to escape but one man did. Xu Hongci, a young medical
student, was a loyal member of the Communist Party until he fell
victim to Mao's Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957. After posting a
criticism of the party, he spent the next fourteen years in the
labor camps. Despite horrific conditions and terrible odds, Hongci
was determined to escape, failing three times before he succeeded
in 1972. Hongci broke out of a prison near the Burmese border,
traveled across China to see his mother in Shanghai one last time,
and then finally crossed the Mongolian border. There he eventually
married and settled into a new life, until he was able to return
home after Mao's death. Originally published in Hong Kong, Hongci's
remarkable memoir recounts his life from childhood through his
prison break. After discovering the book in a Hong Kong library,
the journalist Erling Hoh tracked down the original manuscript and
compiled this abridged translation of Hongci's memoir, which
includes background on this turbulent period, an epilogue following
Hongci up to his death in 2008, and Hongci's own drawings and maps.
Almost nobody was able to escape from Mao's labor camps, but No
Wall Too High tells the true story of someone who did.
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