Chinese Whispers

Chinese Whispers
Publisher: Atlantic Books, 2009

In 1972, Jan Wong became one of only two Westerners admitted to Beijing University at the height of the Cultural Revolution. One day, a fellow student, Yin Luoyi, asked Jan for help in leaving China for the United States. Jan, then a starry-eyed Maoist, reported Yin to the authorities. Yin promptly disappeared.

In 2005, thirty-three years later, Jan returned to Beijing to search for Yin: at the very least she wanted to find out whether Yin had survived. Preoccupied by the past, fascinated by China’s present and future, Jan searched out old friends, foes and comrades in the half-familiar city and, finally, uncovered the truth about the fate of the woman she wronged...