Jeffrey YeThe author's childhood dream was to join the army, then the Red Guard when the Cultural Revolution started, a plan that would never materialize. His parents were soon politically purged, and he witnessed the suicide of his best friend's mother. As hewas growing up, he himself nearly crossed the society's red line, purely by accident. Yet he still managed to hold on to his belief in Communism and volunteered after high school to go the Sino-Soviet border as a militiaman, where he struggled to reconcile the stark contradiction between the ideals and reality. After Mao Zedong's death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, he was enrolled in a medical school among the first group of college students in more than a decade, where he started a journey to undo his past endeavors and retake control of his own destiny. Read More Read Less