Starred Review. Born in 1929 China to a privileged family of Communist sympathizers, Chaozhu has witnessed a country transform while catapulting to its newly-emergent centers of power. Chaozhu's memoir begins during the 1937 Japanese occupation, when his father sent him and his brothers to the U.S. to help raise money for the communists and get "a first-class education," after which they would return to "help build the new China." Returning to China in 1950, after dropping out of Harvard, Chaozhu began working as an interpreter in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, before rising to become a deputy director. After Nixon's ground-breaking 1972 visit to China, Chaozhu had several postings to the U.S. and was appointed as an Ambassador to the U.K. His last position was a 1991-94 stint as under-secretary-general of the United Nations. Chaozhu paints a vivid picture of life in China, both the extreme poverty (by 1958, 30 million Chinese had starved to death) and the civil unrest generated by Mao's draconian economic measures and purges of so-called dissidents. Chaozhu describes hard times but also exciting, eye-witness to history stories featuring Kissinger's and Nixon's first meetings with Enlai. This absorbing book should make an invaluable political (and personal) primer for anyone dealing with today's China.

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Ji Chaozhu was born on July 30, 1929, in the Shanxi Province of China. Throughout his decorated career, he has held posts in China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (where he was deputy director of the Department of Translation and Interpretation and deputy director of American and Oceanic Affairs). In 1982, he was appointed minister counselor of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the United States of America, and has served as China’s ambassador to Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu, and the Court of St. James’s. From 1991 to 1996, he served as the under secretary-general of the United Nations. He currently resides in China with his wife.