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Back to Beijing

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Comrade (cover)
Comrade (cover)

In the still-hot years of Red China’s Cultural Revolution, 19-year-old Chinese-Canadian Jan Wong became one of the rare foreigners admitted to Beijing University.

She was a fired-up young “Montreal Maoist” off to the land of Mao. And once there, she soon betrayed a young Chinese classmate who wanted out. That bright young woman was banished to the countryside and hard labor.

Years later, Jan Wong’s guilt gnawed at her. She went back to try to find the woman and make right the wrong. It’s an incredible, enlightening story.

This hour, On Point: Jan Wong and “A Comrade Lost and Found.”

You can join the conversation. Can you imagine being a young foreigner in Mao’s China, wanting so badly to fit in that you betray a fellow student who confides that she wants to leave? Would you go back and try to make it right?Guest:

Jan Wong joins us from Toronto. From 1988 to 1994, she was  Beijing correspondent for The Toronto Globe and Mail. She later became a columnist for that newspaper and left in 2006. Her new book is "A Comrade Lost and Found: A Beijing Story." She's also author of the previous memoir "Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now."

Read an excerpt from "A Comrade Lost and Found."

This program aired on March 18, 2009.

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