Author Preface
Return to Prisoners of Liberation: Four Years in a Chinese Communist Prison
Authors Preface
On arriving home in 1955 after spending some seven years in China, four of them in a Chinese Communist prison, we were besieged with questions concerning our experiences there. People especially expressed a deep interest in the obvious change in our viewpoints which had taken place during those years.
To answer these questions, we decided to write a book, thinking at the time that with our combined efforts, the project would take at the most a few months. However, no sooner had we begun than complications arose. Since our primary purpose was to depict the change which took place in the individual thinking of each of us, it was impossible to write collectively as “we did so and so” or “we felt so and so.” Secondly it soon became evident that the experience of one of us alone would have been enough to fill two or three volumes.
If we wanted to write a book together then, we would have to condense our material and at the same time find a form which would permit the telling of both our stories as a continuous whole. It was only after much discussion, writing and rewriting that we finally devised what we felt to be a workable plan. Each of us concentrated on those experiences which he felt most significant to his own change and then alternately having our say, wove them together into what we hope is a unified presentation.
We also found ourselves confronted by the problem of names. Not wishing to embarrass any innocent persons, we decided to use fictitious names throughout except for the two Americans who were in prison with us.
Philadelphia, March 1957