This book delves into the experiences and complexities of the people in Nanjing, the ancient capital of the Six Dynasties, and the rich and varied Chinese cultural context, as well as the historical authoritarian origins of China's thousands of years of imperial tyranny, and how Mao Zedong inherited and carried forward this imperial system, and Mao and his followers torture, kill, repression, imprisonment, and exile of elites and dissidents in all fields under the tyranny, and their family members were not only deprived of their human rights, even killed or exterminated during Mao's cultural revolution. Unfortunately, the inhumane imperial power continues to this day.
The author, as a professor of Biomedical Engineering in the United States and a graduate of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, lashes out at Mao Zedong and his fourth wife, Jiang Qing's self-praise of "I am a monk with an umbrella, lawless" and "endless joy in fighting with others", ignoring human rights, brutally suppressing and purging dissidents and innocent people, resulting in the unnatural deaths of tens of millions of people in China.
The book broadens the reader's understanding of the so-called Cultural Revolution, especially the historical dregs of Mao's imperial autocracy and personality cult and hopes that people will learn from this painful lesson and avoid any radical political movement, which will lead to the death of innocent people and the birth of extreme politics.