Fang Yuan (Frank) is a friend of ours in Xiangtan, and we worked together previously on his collection of Chinese folktales, called Small Windows.

Frank grew up during the Cultural Revolution and has vivid memories of those chaotic times for China. Because of a connection to a relative in Taiwan, his father was labeled as a bad element in society. His father was criticized and punished by being separated from his family and forced to do hard labor. When Frank completed middle school, he was sent to a large communal farm on the outskirts of the city to be educated by the peasants. He spent three years there as an educated youth. After Chairman Mao's death, Frank was lucky enough to pass the college-entrance examination. He threw away his straw hat and entered Hunan University in the provincial capital.

For many years Fang Yuan has researched recent Chinese history, and he considers himself qualified as a full professor of the educated youth. In 2001 he and I decided to collaborate on an English- language book of his early life. The book includes his father's experiences during World War II and the Great Leap Forward (1958-61). It progresses from Frank's early memories of hunger to the disturbances of the Red Guards, a year of exile in the mountains, making bricks and digging tunnels in the city, farm labor as an educated youth, years as a college student, and finally as a young man determined to make his own way in a new life.

The book includes 11 pages of rare photos and contains incidental artwork from the time of the Cultural Revolution.