In 1977, after Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping reopened China's universities. Sasha Gong was still in jail, held for eleven months as the youngest member of an underground dissident group. One of her guards, a year older than she was, asked the prisoner to tutor her for the college entrance exam, so Gong moved the lessons to the night shift, when the other guards slept, and taught herself the high school material she had never been given. Then the head of her own interrogation team was thrown in prison.
At the end of 1978, Xi Zhongxun, the father of Xi Jinping, arrived to take charge of Guangdong province, freshly released from a communist jail himself. At the request of Zhao Ziyang, who had handled the group's case and later became premier, he released the dissidents without any approval and summoned them to a long table. When they began listing their grievances, he stood up and told them to stop complaining: he had spent sixteen years in a communist jail, five of them in shackles. Then he sat down, turned to the 22-year-old across from him, and asked what she wanted. She said college.
He gave her his secretary's phone number in case anyone tried to stop her. She took the exam she had prepared for in jail, placed first in her province, and chose Peking University.
Sasha Gong went on to a PhD in sociology from Harvard and later directed the China branch of Voice of America. She told Jenny Beth Martin this story on The Jenny Beth Show, a production of Tea Party Patriots Action.
Call your senators and representative at 202-224-3121 and tell them America does not need a socialist experiment. Watch the full interview at jennybethshow.com and learn more at teapartypatriots.org.
00:00 — 1977: Deng Xiaoping reopens the universities while she sits in jail
00:14 — The guard who asked a prisoner to tutor her for the college exam
01:11 — The head of her interrogation team is thrown in prison
01:52 — Xi Zhongxun, fresh from jail, and the Party's third plenum
02:38 — Zhao Ziyang's request: "please release this group"
03:25 — He summons the group: "Tell me what you want"
04:11 — "I was in a communist jail for sixteen years. For five years, I was in shackles."
04:36 — "What do you want?" "I want to go to college."
05:07 — The exam, first in the province, and Peking University
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