Born in pre-Revolutionary China and brought up in the Midlands, Esther Cheo Ying returned to China in 1949 after a traumatic childhood, convinced that there she would find the happiness and sense of belonging she longed for. Caught up in the turmoil of civil war and sympathetic to the Communist Revolution, she joined the Red Army and then stayed on to work in the new People’s Republic. But despite her determination to make a new life in China could she truly be happy in a country which encouraged constant self criticism and viewed her as a ‘false foreign devil’?
Black Country to Red China is an extraordinary account of life during and beyond the Cultural Revolution, but it is also a fascinating insight into the struggle to come to terms with your own identity.