Swimming to Freedom is a deeply personal, heart-wrenching memoir of Kent Wong's upbringing in Communist China during the Cultural Revolution and his tenacious flight to freedom against all odds. When Kent Wong was a young boy, his father, a patriotic Chinese official in the customs office in Hong Kong, joined an insurrection at work and returned with the family to the newly established People's Republic of China. Hailed as heroes, they settled in the southern city of Canton. But Mao's China was dangerous and unstable, ...
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Swimming to Freedom is a deeply personal, heart-wrenching memoir of Kent Wong's upbringing in Communist China during the Cultural Revolution and his tenacious flight to freedom against all odds. When Kent Wong was a young boy, his father, a patriotic Chinese official in the customs office in Hong Kong, joined an insurrection at work and returned with the family to the newly established People's Republic of China. Hailed as heroes, they settled in the southern city of Canton. But Mao's China was dangerous and unstable, with landlords executed en masse and millions dying of starvation during the Great Leap Forward. Swimming to Freedom is a memoir of a childhood amid revolutionary times, where boyish adventures and school days mixed with dire poverty and political persecution, and a moving story of an inextinguishable yearning to be free. Mao's Hundred Flower Campaign ensnared Wong's father. A decade later the Cultural Revolution closed schools, plunged the country into chaos, and scattered Wong and his sisters to disparate villages where they struggled to eke out a bare existence. Wong began to realize that with higher education closed to him (as the son of a "capitalist rightist"), he had no future in China. So, when he hooked up with a dissident underground and heard about fellow countrymen braving extraordinary hardship to reach freedom by swimming across miles of open water to Hong Kong, he decided to risk his life for a better future. Swimming to Freedom is an extraordinary account of a largely unknown chapter in history, when an estimated half million "Freedom Swimmers" risked everything to escape hardship and oppression. It is a gripping memoir and a moving testament to the human spirit. "It's a lesson in degradation and determination. Yet it's also an adventure story of forged documents, homemade rafts, and sneaky smugglers." -- New York Daily News
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Add this copy of Swimming to Freedom: My Escape From China and the to cart. $10.10, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Austell, GA, UNITED STATES, published 2022 by Harry N. Abrams.
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Add this copy of Swimming to Freedom: My Escape From China and the to cart. $14.56, new condition, Sold by Book Outlet rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Jefferson City, TN, UNITED STATES, published 2021 by Abrams.
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New in new dust jacket. New, Publisher overstock, may have small remainder mark. Excellent condition, never read, purchased from publisher as excess inventory.
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Add this copy of Swimming to Freedom: My Escape From China and the to cart. $57.70, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2022 by Harry N. Abrams.
