In 1966 Mao Zedong unleashed the Cultural Revolution, a brutal and bloody campaign aimed at obliterating the past and building a a new, egalitarian China on the rubble of its ancient civilizations.Now it is 1988 and while the tide of change has turned for the better, the legacy of Mao lingers on in the minds of former devotees and victims alike.Five years have passed since China's first opening to the outside world and the effects are undeniable.Initially overawed by foreign customs, China's young generation has become increasingly restless, frustrated by the rigid system that has bound them for so long.This book spans decades of turmoil, weaving individual suffering and anguish into a broader tapestry of mass political persecution and terror.It also captures the essence of the Chinese people: exasperating, stubborn, opinionated yet warm-hearted and resilient, which the outside world would ignore at its peril.Indeed, the Greek and Roman civilizations, the world's great religions and political philosophies, the Renaissance and the rise and fall of the great powers, the American Civil War and the two World Wars, are all taught and remembered as intrinsic to mankind's history, while China's great and enduring civilizations, its turbulent history and incredible creativity and inventions thousands of years before the Renaissance, are largely unknown in the non-Chinese world.Yet, China's past and present should be taught in schools and universities as they shaped the life, attitude and future of a quarter of our planet's population, aspiring to become the world's dominant economic, political and military power within the next twenty-five years.The lack of understanding shown by the world's political leaders for their Chinese counterparts' thinking on how to achieve these goals is perplexing.