Chinese Whispers: Searching For Forgiveness In Beijing by Jan Wong

I came across this book when I received an email update from Reading Matters - which I subscribe to -where her excellent review got me interested in finding out more about this particular book and the author behind it.

Chinese Whispers (published in 2007 as Beijing Confidential in Canada) is classified as a non-fiction book.

It is a true and cathartic account of a one-of-a-kind tale by the controversial journalist, Jan Wong, in search of forgiveness in Beijing, as the title points out.

Apparently, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, the then starry-eyed Maoist - ignorant, innocent and idealistic - had reported a student to the authorities for wanting to go to America.  Why did she do it?  She claimed she was ignorant and naive.

Thirty-three years on, Wong returns to Beijing to search for the woman who has haunted her conscience.

She hopes to apologise, perhaps somehow to make amends.

She only has a month to find the woman she betrayed.

Can she do it in a country of 1.3 billion people?  Above all, she knew and still knows nothing about the woman she betrayed.  How is she even going to begin searching for the woman?

This is a memorable and entertaining read about a woman who, preoccupied by the past, finally uncovers the truth about the woman she wronged.

We can all take a leaf out of Wong's book.

About the author:  Jan Wong is a third-generation Canadian of Chinese ancestry, born and raised in Montreal.  She was the much-acclaimed Beijing correspondent for the Toronto Globe and Mail from 1988 to 1994.

A graduate of McGill University, Beijing University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, her first book, Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now, was named one of Time magazine's top ten books of 1996 and remains banned in China.

She lives in Toronto with her husband and two sons.

Her latest book, Out of the Blue: A Memoir of Loss, Recovery, Renewal and Yes, Happiness (2011) is about her depression and the controversy with the Globe.

Jan Wong talks frankly to George Stroumboulopoulos about her book back in 2007 in this youtube video:



As this is a true account of a brave lady's personal journey to come to terms with her past and to make amends for it, I will not be giving the book a rating.