"...while China was doing class war, the West was doing business", just one of many notable quotes in No Wall Too High: One Man's Daring Escape by Xu Hongci. Another: "Study hard. Knowledge is the only thing people can't steal from you" from Wang Jinru, Communist prison detachment leader (a relative good guy). I just finished reading this epic, non-fiction thriller, recommended by another person with whom I participate on a public discussion board. I heartily thank that poster. Xu is one of the few, if not the only, successful escapee from a Maoist Chinese labor camp. The book graphically details his three escape attempts, especially his last, successful one. People whose views are perceived to deviate one jot or tittle from the accepted "thought" are subject to years of brutal torture, public "self-criticism" and sometimes execution or fatal beatings.

Without trumpeting any ideological views itself, the book illustrates why the free West succeeds and almost every other system fails. More information would require a spoiler alert. ( )

No Wall Too High is riveting true adventure and provides insights into a laogai (“labor reform”) camp, the Chinese version of the Gulag ca. 1960s and 70s. It's based on a rough manuscript that had a regional audience in China. The translator, Erling Hoh, found it by accident in a small Hong Kong bookstore and realized its wider potential. This is a fantastic book. It starts slowly but keeps getting better right through to the end. It's believed Xu Hongci was the only person to successfully escape a laogai. I particularly like how it is not written for a Western audience - the translator occasionally provides notes or commentary to explain - it has an authentic feel of Chinese literature for Chinese readers, but is accessible and universally interesting. It's worth taking a step off the beaten track. ( )

This posthumous autobiography demonstrates the horrors of extreme dictatorship and wrong-headedness. Xu Hongci began his political life as a student whose school was invited to voice their criticisms of Mao's government by creating wall posters. Once the regime realized that a gigantic can of worms had been opened, those who spoke up were subject to long prison terms in brutal work camps. Over the course of 20 years, once he finished his term of confinement, Hongci was re-categorized as a "post sentence detainee" and kept in prison for years until he escaped to Mongolia. Hongci read (until his books were confiscated and burned) the theories of Marx and Engels: "The revolutionary passion and profound ideas of these two Germans made a deep impression on me. The more I read, the more I realized the complete disjunction between our present reality (China in the late '60s) and the socialism they had propounded. Whether this chasm was due to a misunderstanding on the part of our Chinese revolutionaries or to the fact that they were actually pursuing their own brand of it is a question worth exploring. In a certain sense, Mao was right when he said, "The more books you read, that more reactionary you become." Indeed, I had read too many books."

This tale also works wonderfully as an adventure story, as the reader is tuned into Hongci's inner thoughts and plans during his escape attempt and captures. It's a fascinating view of what those of us who carried around The Little Red Book didn't see and didn't know. ( )