Feather in the Storm talks about author Emily Wu's personal experience in surviving the Cultural Revolution, which destroyed thousands of lives in China. Her father Wu Ningku and mother Li Yikai were intellectuals, therefore her family was categorized as a "black" or rightist family and was subjected to continuous hardship, humiliation and abuse. She recalled her ordeals over a span of 19 years from the first time she met her father when she was three years old to the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 with the death of Mao Zedong.
Chinese Lessons recounted writer John Pomfret's experience living in China from 1980, studying in Nanjing University as an exchange student, and his perspective of the country. He witnessed how China was slowly opening itself to the world after the Cultural Revolution, how the lives of his former classmates changed, as well as his own life as one of the first exchange students from the US and his intimate relationships, his journalism career and as a witness to the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989.
These two books have allowed me to understand more about China, especially the Cultural Revolution and its effects. It's hard to imagine how many lives were destroyed by this movement and how the same man who liberated China almost destroyed it with his own hands.
