Red China Blues

Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now by Jan Wong, Anchor Books, 1997. 

Number One Machine Tool Factory

In July 1972 the Chinese government gave Jan Wong permission to go to Beijing University starting in August. While a student Jan worked at Number One Machine Tool Factory. This was part of Mao’s effort to make city dwellers and intellectuals understand the lives of peasants and workers.

Big Joy Farm

Jan graduated from McGill in May 1974 with honors in history. She went back to Beijing University in the Fall of 1974 on a Canadian government scholarship. In March 1975 she and her classmates went to work at Big Joy Farm for two months, digging latrines and building brick dormitories. In August 1980 she left China and moved back to Canada with a Jewish husband that she had acquired while in China. 

Becoming a Journalist

She then studied journalism at Columbia University. She worked for several years as a business reporter for several newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe. In 1988 she went back to China as a reporter for the Boston Globe’s Beijing bureau. In her memoir, Jan Wong describes many Chinese events and topics:

Events and Topics

• The January 1976 death of Premier Zhou Enlai

• July 1976 Tang Shan earthquake

• September 1976 death of Mao Zedong

• December 1978 Fifth Modernization poster of Wei Jingsheng

• June 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre

• Laogai forced labor camps

• Bride trafficking

• Transplant organs from executed prisoners