Moying Li at the Boston Athenaem

Moying Li: Snow Falling in Spring
WGBH Forum Network

In 1966 Moying Li, a student at a prestigious language school in Beijing, seems destined for a promising future. Everything changes when student Red Guards begin to orchestrate brutal assaults, violent public humiliations, and forced confessions. After watching her teachers and headmasters beaten in public, Moying flees school for the safety of home, only to witness her beloved grandmother denounced, her home ransacked, and her father's precious books flung onto the back of a truck while he himself is taken away. From labor camp, her father smuggles a reading list of banned books to Moying so that she can continue to learn. Then, with so much of her life at risk, she finds sanctuary in the world of imagination and learning. This inspiring memoir follows Moying Li from age twelve to twenty-two, illuminating a complex, dark time in China's history as it tells the compelling story of one girl's difficult but determined coming-of-age during the Cultural Revolution.

Boston Boston Athenaeum member Moying Li, one of the first students to leave China for study abroad after the Cultural Revolution, came to the United States in 1980 on a full scholarship from Swarthmore College. Li's first book, Beacon Hill: The Life and Times of a Neighborhood, was published in 2002.

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