Zhu, Xiao Di is a very courageous intelligent writer whose remarkable true story reads like a novel, as it goes to the core of what happened when the noble Chinese cause turns sour and the true believers become victims of the revolution.

It is a brilliant memoir that documents, with an insider's fascinating perspective, the painful difficulties faced by the author's family, under Chairman Mao's "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution."

I highly recommend it to anyone seeking to know and understand more about public history and society past and present in China.

Having spent two weeks in Beijing preceding and during President Clinton's state visit to China, I returned to the United States with many questions. I was curious to learn more about the Communist government, China's history, its culture, and especially, the conditions under which the Chinese people have lived in the period since Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China. In my quest for knowledge and understanding I came to read Zhu's _Thirty Years in a Red House_. This book offers the reader remarkable insight into the hardships and heartaches of a Chinese family during the years of the Cultural Revolution. While I had been dismayed at other accounts of the injustices dealt to the educated and intellectual citizens and leaders of this time, I was greatly heartened by Zhu's account of his parents' beliefs and practices in spite of the hardships they endured. This book gives one hope that the people of China will one day prevail, and that their leaders, both present and future, will learn from the sacrifices of those who went before.

Zhu, Xiao Di is a very courageous intelligent writer whose remarkable true story reads like a novel, as it goes to the core of what happened when the noble Chinese cause turns sour and the true believers become victims of the revolution. It is a brilliant memoir that documents, with an insider's fascinating perspective, the painful difficulties faced by the author's family, under Chairman Mao's "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution." I highly recommend it to anyone seeking to know and understand more about public history and society past and present in China. --Ed Johnson, Host of "Golden Hours" at the Oregon Public Broadcasting

I am a twelve year old, and I recently got interested in China's recent history. Ross Terill has visited China many times, and knows a lot about the country. This book contains a good analysis of what happened in Communist China, from Mao to Tiananman Square, though it could have been a bit less boring.

I learned a lot about China from this book, though. Issues in China and China's recent history now makes more sense to me. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants an informative look at China's recent history. For a more entertaining book, I would choose something like Shen Tong's autobiography, "Almost a Revolution".

Even so, this was an interesting and valuable read.

An excellent book. Well and interestingly written. Provides an excellent review of the cultural heritage of the Chinese people and the issues that will make China's transformation to Democracy very slow and circuitous. Mao's progression from a charismatic revolutionary leader of and for the people to yet another despot is well documented. He found ways to hold on to power that were truely revolutionary. Instead of eliminating the pretenders to his throne, he, turned the entire nation against his enimies using the Red Guards and the Cultural Revolution. Earlier Mao showed his intellectual limitations and blind adherence to communist dogmas with the catastrophic "Great Leap Forward". Great book.

I ploughed into Terrill's Mao biography with great eagerness, as his account of Jiang Qing, Mao's notorious wife, is one of the best China biographies around.

I was disappointed. Disclaimer, I didn't even finish it. Perhaps Mao is a more complicated subject, but the historical discourse, Communist theoretical deconstruction, etc, just bogged me down. I only got as far as the Xian incident before having to return the book.

Of the parts I read, though, the account of Mao's youth was compelling, and I suspect later periods of Cultural Revolution and Zhongnanhai power struggles would also prove so.

Mao is, of course, a figure of history hard to capture as a human being. Terrill does a good job of dissecting the motivations of the man behind the myth, although such exercises cannot rise about conjecture. This book is worth reading, but not casually: it is highly academic, and requires the commitment of a weight loss program. Stick with it, you'll probably be rewarded.

After reading Wild Swans I wanted to find out a bit more about China in the time of Mao, so I read this book about him. It's really good, in that I found it quite objective. In a way I found myself respecting his original beliefs, but he was hopeless at putting anything into practice. I only gave the book 4 stars, because at times it's difficult reading.

Ross Terrill's book, "Mao: A Biography" was originally published in 1981. As such it was able one of the first biographies of the complete life of Mao tse-Tung, the great Chinese revolutionary who died in 1976.

Collected in its 430+ pages is a pretty balanced and accurate story of the life of Mao. Additionally, Terrill's writing style is such that a reader is able to enjoy the book without any previous knowlege of the history of China.

A racist, imperial, semiterrorist outfit, that is the conclusion
of the author about the current Chinese regime, and also about China in general throughout history. Yes, there is a "Us vs Them"
or Han Chinese verus barbarians element in Chinese culture and history, but when the Hans were sometimes deadly enemies with the normadic peoples, it is pretty difficut not developing a "Us vs Them" mentality. Have you ever heard the phrase "the only good indian is a dead indian"? Imperial? The current Chinese state does include territories that are inhabited by peoples who are not called Chinese traditionally, so is the whole continent of America, south and north. Does anyone seriously think the native Americans, or what is left of them, to be allowed to vote to evict anyone who is not one of them from the United States of America? What about Australia - where the author originally came from? Would the aborigines there be allowed to cast votes to kick everyone else out? China a semiterrorist outfit? China does regularly threaten Taiwan with invason because it
considers Taiwan to be part of its country waiting to be reclaimed. If US could invade Iraq because it suspected Iraq was
hiding WMDs even though nothing of that nature is found to this day except a bunch of gold bars, then why can't any country invade any other country for whatever reason?

Ross Terrill sees continuity between the past and the present in China's domestic politics and international relations. The imperial system, he believes, is still the fundamental structure in which China's leaders make decisions, even in the twenty-first century, and even after more than fifty years of Communist rule.

That leaders like Mao and Deng (and even Jiang) were emperors in all but name is something of a cliché, but Terrill gives a fresh perspective to this commonly-held notion. He is well-read in China's history, and shows it here to good effect without weighing himself down with excessive scholarship. His style is light and well-suited to his approach: prove a point to the general reader's satisfaction and then move on.

By far the most interesting sections of Terrill's book are those having to do with China's world view. China has traditionally looked upon not just the rest of East Asia, but even the rest of the world as an extension of China itself. This was not so much a ruling concept as it was a pervasive ruling assumption, and it formed the basis for imperial China. When China was strong, this assumption allowed it to swallow up other areas from Tibet to Vietnam without elaborate conceptual justifications; when China was weak, the assumption was still in force through tributary relations or complex diplomatic relations that allowed Beijing to appear to have the upper hand even when it did not. Circumstances may change, but the assumption is never questioned.

Terrill draws numerous parallels between imperial China and today's new China. Beijing still seeks to punch above its weight by formalizing relationships with other countries in ways China prefers even when it cannot immediately achieve its aims (this explains why China puts such stress on its "One-China" policy with the United States). What is remarkable, he argues, is not so much that China would use this strategy as how successful it is in doing so. Other nations - whether out of excessive respect for China's culture or fear of losing access to China's market - bow down and accede to many of China's demands.

In the area of international relations, this book should be viewed as the counterpoint to "The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China's Search for Security." Whereas the authors of that book, Andrew Nathan and Robert Ross, view China as fundamentally conservative in its international outlook, Terrill sees it as potentially destabilizing.

I think this book is very insightful in its exposition of the historical and cultural roots of the current Chinese government. The problem highlighted in the book is well reflected in the attitude of the previous reviewer. The regime creates an illusion through myth and creative history that associates the Chinese civilization with itself. The crucial thing to realize here is that the communist government IS NOT representative of chinese civilization. Neither have they contributed anything to chinese civilization, in fact their massive idiocy did much to destroy chinese culture.

Like the Terril, I love the country but hate the government. It's a disgrace that the bulk of chinese people in this world have the misfortune of being ruled by such an idiotic regime. Buy this book so you can see past the myth and lies that the communist government uses to maintain power. Do not confuse the greatness of Chinese civilization with the idiocy of the chinese government. They had no part in the great achievements of Chinese individuals throughout history, so don't give them credit for it!

If you like sensationalism like the "Predator" series on Wild Discovery or films showing people eating monkey brain in Taiwan and Hongkong, then this book is for you. If you are looking for enumeration of examples that can rile you up about the Cultural Revolution, you will like this book. But you don't need to buy it -- or even read it, because you can easily incorporate it in your indignations without wasting your time. You can easily invent your own stories without relying on this "authoritive" account. Any books dealing with such subject ought to be under especially tight objective standards, which the author apparently does not adhere. It is very badly done and borders more on the fictional and figments of imaginations.

The book begins by accounting several accounts of cannibalism during the Cultural Revolution, without producing any convincing evidence that the government actively sponsors such events, as the author insinuates. I don't have the time nor patience to prove nor disprove that such events occurred, as social pathology exists in any society; just as the Donner Party in Califorina or the Jeffery Dommer murder do not highlight any bigger meaning for the American society at large. Incidentally canabalism is only recently practised by some tribes in Southeast Asia, without any obvious political undertones.

The author then digresses into the tradition of cannibalism in the minority tribe that was implicated in these events. He quickly asserts that one should not pass morale judgment on their tradition, as the chauvanistic Han majority does to its national minorities and gives a few references to cannibalism in the Chinese history. At this point, the author seems to have sensed the quagmire that his logic has sunk into; it is no longer a simple case of "communist eats people," and the book is in danger of losing steam in building up his case against the Chinese government.

But he picks up with this indignation at Han chauvanism (which is true but definitely tangential to his argument) and brings the point home by using this as an example of why he became disillusioned and anti-communist. It is confusing whether he is simply anti-cmmunist or is stepping into an anti-Chinese sentiment.

It is indeed quite sad to see that some people had not moved beyond sloganeering their prejudices whether it's against the capitalist roaders and running dogs during the Cultural Revolution, or the sexually handicapped Chiang Kai shek in Taiwan. They seem to be rigid with an urge at personal vendetta and character assassination and are incapable in engaging in rational scholarship without the emotional bagage.

The author aptly details the results of government sanctioned murder and cannabalism. The cannabalism was partly a result of the artificially created famine that swept China between 1958-1963. The Chinese Communist Party, despite warnings from Moscow, engaged in exactly the same type of agricultural policies favored by Stalin in the late 1920s and 1930s. The results mirrored the conditions that existed in Russia and especially the Ukraine. Massive famine, starvation, malnutrition, the extermination of entire groups of people, rampant government corruption and incompetence, and finally cannabalism followed in each other in a grim parade. Cannabalism became the norm as entire villages were destroyed silently by the famine. The author highlights the cultural attributes towards cannabalism that are unique to Chinese society and history, apart from the results of the famine.

For those who believe (incorrectly) that this work lacks scholarly rigor, or is simply Western race-baiting, I would recommend the following works: "Harvest of Sorrow", "The Black Book of Communism", "The Gulag Archipelago", and "Hungry Ghosts". These works, and their authors, demonstrate the barbarism that was and is communism, and the use of famine as an instrument of social policy. Ad hominem attacks cannot refute the indesputable fact that Communist parties around the world have murdered over 100 million people.

That's awful, but it's true. And the Chinese has imputed this cannibalism to every enemy country, such as Japan of WWII.