Hundreds of thousands of Chinese fled Mao Zedong’s regime and made for Hong Kong, then a British colony and haven for refugees. Many swam to get there, including Kent Wong, who eventually came to the U.S. and practiced medicine. Now retired, he set down his thoughts in the form of a memoir of oppression and hope.
Wong grew up in material squalor but with a supportive family that came under pressure when his father was accused of being a “capitalist rightist” as the nation reeled under Mao’s socially and economically destructive dictates. Mao’s lunatic agricultural policy triggered the Great Famine in the 1950s, killing more than 20 million. In the ‘60s his Cultural Revolution tried to stamp out traditional Chinese culture and impose a crushing uniformity of thought and expression. Everyone wore an identical set of clothes and was encouraged to denounce deviancy of any sorts.
What Wong reports of the Cultural Revolution in Swimming to Freedom would be absurd if not so tragic. One family was violently abused in public for the crime of wrapping a newspaper photo of Mao around a fish. Gunfights broke out between rival Communist factions. Schools closed. Still a young man, Wong tried to escape to Hong Kong but was caught and charged with being an “illegal visitor” to the British colony. “Each detainee seemed to want to have another go at escaping,” Wong writes. He finally made it.
