Words At Large

It was a case of being haunted by a past wrong. In 1972, at the height of China’s Cultural Revolution, Jan Wong went to study at Beijing University. At the time she was one of only two Westerners permitted at the institution. One day a young stranger asked for her help to get to the United States. Wong, a fervent believer in the Maoist cause, immediately reported her to the authorities.

Thirty-three years later and still bothered by her conscience, Wong returned to Beijing to try to track down the woman whose life she was certain she had ruined forever. Wong describes that quest in her latest book, Beijing Confidential: A Tale of Comrades Lost and Found (Anchor Canada).

An award-winning reporter and columnist, Jan Wong was the Globe and Mail’s Beijing correspondent from 1988 to 1994 and has also written for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. She’s the author of several non-fiction books, including Jan Wong’s China: Reports from a Not-So-Foreign Correspondent and Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now, which was named one of Time magazine’s top 10 books of 1996 and remains banned in China.

Shelagh Rogers spoke with Jan Wong on Sounds Like Canada. They discussed life in Beijing then and now, the country’s transition from communism to capitalism, and why Wong believes China will eventually hit a spiritual crisis despite having a long history of religious tradition.

Listen to their conversation here and find out how going against her "bourgeois wimp" instincts came back to haunt Wong later in life.

First aired November 5, 2007 on Sounds Like Canada. [runs 21:42]