The Bitter Sea Quotes

“The national mobilization to exterminate the "Four Pests"... was the first of a series of disasters precipitated by the Great Helmsman after the Anti-Rightist Campaign.

"National mobilisation" meant that all 500 million people in China stopped work in order to take up a single specific task — in this case, the extermination of sparrows, flies, mosquitoes, and rats.”
― Charles N. Li, The Bitter Sea: Coming of Age in a China Before Mao

“There were quite a few returnees from Hong Kong and Macau, but... most of the two thousand plus students at our school came from South and Southeat Asia: Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines. They had all come back for pretty much the same reason: a strong anti-Chinese sentiment mushrooming in their countries, which had recently freed themselves from colonialism… Chinese were targeted for attack by the newly empowered natives because under colonial rule the Chinese had enjoyed a social and economic status higher than that of the indigenous population.”
― Charles N. Li, The Bitter Sea: Coming of Age in a China Before Mao

“Swatting flies is a decision made by the party in the central government… You don’t mean to imply that you are wiser than Chairman Mao and Premier Chou, do you?”
― Charles N. Li, The Bitter Sea: Coming of Age in a China Before Mao