No Tears for Mao: Growing Up in the Cultural Revolution

Red Guards called her grandfather an enemy of the people and beat him to death; her parents were sent into rural exile for reeducation; as a youngster, Niu-Niu was branded a child of criminals and reduced to poverty. The early part of her memoir consists of powerful vignettes recalling what it was like to live in a society where laughter and tears were officially regulated, kindness toward a 10-year-old ``counterrevolutionary'' was a serious crime, where the self-righteous urge to punish others for political incorrectness spread like cancer. The latter chapters are disappointing, however. As a student at Beijing University, Niu-Niu seemed determined to live up to her name, which can be translated ``Ill-Natured'' or ``Sour-puss,'' and to be ``without love, without hope, and without decency.'' Part of this attitude revolved around her relationships with ``oversexed foreign demons,'' who included a hapless American from whom she extorted money. And none of it has much to do with the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution. Niu-Niu's account of her post-childhood experiences-she bragged to a friend during this period that she was ``a slut''-is lacking in focus and not detailed enough to satisfy prurient curiosity. The author now lives in France. Photos. (Feb.)