Detailing the story of one man's struggle to survive the Chinese Gulag and his daring return to China to tell the world what happened there, this is the true story of Harry Wu. In April 1960, the morning after his graduation from college, Wu was summarily arrested as a political criminal and, without a trial, found himself cast into a world of torture, interminable labour under extreme conditions and mass starvation. In this narrative, he relives the 19 harrowing years that followed. Finally released from prison in 1979, Wu was allowed to leave China for the USA in 1985. Determined to reveal the truth of the Gulag, he returned to China in 1991 with an American news crew. Posing as a US businessman buying prison goods, he took a hidden camera into the camps and captured on film, for the first time, images of the life behind the walls of the Chinese Gulag.

Table of Contents

Childhood's End. Shifting Winds. Counterrevolutionary Crimes. No Way Out. Inside the Gates. Learning from the Peasants. Beyond the Wall. The Running Dog. Xing's Curse. No Time for Dreams. Death Watch. The Coldest Winter. Kite Dreams. Biting Dogs. Confinement. The Little Woman. Revolution on the Farm. Another Day. A Larger Bird Cage. Resettlement. The Journey Back. A Resting Place. Epilogue. Index.