She was told almost immediately that Meiping had committed suicide in Nien did not believe this and was to find subsequently that she had been murdered by Red Guards. This shattering revelation, and further attacks from leftist activists, meant that, in , she applied to leave China, and went to Ottawa, Canada , and then, in , to Washington.
She was to be based there for the rest of her long life. With the publication of her memoir she received acclaim. The book was reviewed warmly, partly because it told the inhuman and incomprehensible story of the Cultural Revolution in a human, comprehensible voice. But the trauma that the events in the late s had left on Nien were not so easily erased. She told Time magazine in "In Washington, I live a full and busy life. Only sometimes I feel a haunting sadness. Once outside she learned that her only child, Meiping, an actress with the Shanghai Film Studio, was dead.
The official explanation was suicide, but Mrs. Cheng learned that her daughter had been murdered by the Red Guards for refusing to denounce her mother as a class enemy. In , after emigrating to Canada and then the United States, Mrs. The book won critical acclaim and became a best seller. Yao Nien was born on Jan. Her father, the descendant of wealthy landowners, was a vice minister in the navy.
In she went to study at the London School of Economics, where she became a fervent socialist and met her husband, Kang-chi Cheng. She was forced to share her home with other families and was wrenched from a comfortable life into the grinding poverty of the masses. By , she had managed to leave China for Canada. Three years later she moved to Washington, using money her husband had left her in overseas bank accounts.
In , she was a guest at a White House state dinner, where she chatted with President Reagan. Her book was excerpted at length in Time magazine. She became a U. Cheng was born Jan. In she went to study at the London School of Economics, where she met her future husband, Kang-chi Cheng.
The couple returned to China before , and her husband joined the ministry of foreign affairs for the Kuomintang, the ruling party at the time. The couple were sent to Australia to establish an embassy and then were transferred to the ministry in Shanghai until Communists came to power in He died of cancer in , and she joined the oil company as an advisor. Her daughter, Meiping, was an aspiring actress.
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