Nien Cheng was arrested by Red Guards in Shanghai and imprisoned for over six years without trial during Mao's Cultural Revolution.
On September 27, 1966, at the height of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, Nien Cheng was seized from her Shanghai home by Red Guards and taken into custody on fabricated charges of espionage, largely because of her Western connections, her wealth, and her former employment with Shell International Petroleum Company.
She was held in solitary confinement at Shanghai's No. 1 Detention House for more than six and a half years, subjected to interrogation, humiliation, and physical mistreatment as authorities pressured her to confess to being a spy for foreign powers — a confession she steadfastly refused to give despite intense coercion.
Her imprisonment exemplified the brutal excesses of the Cultural Revolution, during which intellectuals, the wealthy, and those with foreign ties were routinely persecuted as "class enemies." Her refusal to falsely confess, even under extreme duress, became emblematic of quiet, dignified resistance against totalitarian pressure.
This ordeal, along with the loss of her home, possessions, and ultimately her only daughter Meiping (who died under suspicious circumstances tied to the same political persecution), formed the harrowing core of her internationally acclaimed 1986 memoir, Life and Death in Shanghai, which brought global attention to the human cost of Mao's political campaigns.