Nien Cheng Analysis

    Nien Cheng was imprisoned under the Communist rule of Mao Zedong who started the Cultural Revolution. The guards are constantly pushing and tormenting Nien to confess. It is not until reading further that I understood what they wanted her to confess. They wanted her to follow everything Mao Zedong’s rules and anything that he says is right. The Red Guards’ tormenting turns into torturing and punishing. She is put in restricting handcuffs and put in a small dusty solitude box with no windows. The guards told her as long as she does not confess the handcuffs stay on her. She is not able to eat or drink and would not confess because she feels that she has done nothing wrong. As portrayed throughout the reading Nien is stubborn and stuck strongly to her faith and beliefs. Nien’s hands swelled, oozed pus, and blood she wrote, “I prayed to God to help me recover the use of my hands” (p.124). Another example when she writes, “It seemed there was no alternative to relying on myself to deal with the wounds on my wrists and feet. With the help of God, I thought, I would find some way to prevent infection” (p.125). Even when she was so scared that her hands would be cripple or she would have no hands after this she continued to pray and stay strong to her beliefs. It is so crucial for her not to confess to these guards because that would be submission to the rule of Mao Zedong and his beliefs not her own. Nien is such a strong woman who goes through years of punishment and never drifts away from her values. 

    While Nien struggled with the torture she endured one person in the time of her imprisonment was kind to her. The woman that brings her rice, even though she could not take off the handcuffs, gives her advice for eating her rice for tomorrow. The woman says to Nien, “‘It’s not impossible. Think hard. There is a way. You have a spoon’” (p.120). Though at first confused Nien figured about what she meant, and it helped her eat the rice even in handcuffs. The woman from the kitchen continued to feed her well and one afternoon even filled up her bowl with rice, cabbage, and two hard-boiled eggs that were hidden at the bottom. The woman even gave her the idea to wail so that the guards would know her handcuffs were causing her a lot of pain and getting worse. Nien did not show any emotion though because as a child she was always disciplined not to. Nien noticed that the woman’s feet had been crippled with foot binding, an old custom that lingered into the 1930s in some remote rule areas of China. […] I thought she must be one of those country women who had been liberated by the Communist troops as they swept down the plains of North China and had joined their ranks and had become a Party member” (p.120). Mao Zedong had taken over a lot of their freedoms and social rights to conform to his Communist rule. This woman knew about part of the struggle Nien was going through, was concerned for her, and was doing everything she secretly does to help.

 Word Count: 548