Nien Cheng, the author of Life and Death in Shanghai, died in Washington on November 2 at the age of 94. She was an incredibly courageous woman and the embodiment of grace and wisdom.
She loved traditional Chinese culture, but her world was shattered on August 30, 1966, when Red Guards ransacked her home and, on September 27, arrested her. She spent the next 6 1/2 years in Shanghai's No1 Detention House, in solitary confinement.
Communist Party interrogators accused Cheng of being a spy, but her real 'crime' was that she was viewed as a 'capitalist roader'. She had attended the London School of Economics in the 1930s, where she met her husband, Kang-chi Cheng, who later became general manager for Shell in Shanghai.
When he died, in 1957, Nien Cheng became a special adviser to the new general manager. She was the highest-ranked businesswoman in China at the time. Her skills in dealing with party officials were invaluable and helped Shell stay in China until the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
During her imprisonment, Cheng refused to admit to any wrongdoing. She was tortured and nearly died, but her determination to survive and her deep faith gave her the strength to persevere. She was released from prison on March 27, 1973, only to find the Red Guards had murdered her only child, Meiping, for failing to 'confess' and denounce her mother as a 'class enemy'. Cheng's one hope in life was gone; she left China forever in 1980, and settled in Washington in 1983.
Anyone who knew Cheng could immediately see that she was special - even the doctor at the No1 Detention House said he never met a more 'truculent and argumentative' prisoner. When she learned of her imminent release, she refused to leave the prison unless the authorities declared, in writing, that she was 'innocent of any crime or political mistake'. She insisted that they offer 'an apology for wrongful arrest', and called the official statement 'a sham and a fraud'.