Once you start using stock photos, you see them everywhere.
The Asian guy on a chair in the Tokio Marine ad looked familiar because he is the illustration for “The man sat.”
This stock photo looks familiar…
Month: November 2013
Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng
Life and Death in Shanghai is an amazing book about an amazing woman. The tone in which she tells her own story is deadpan, but the events are extremely dramatic. If you’ve never read about the Cultural Revolution, it’s eye-opening.
Some of my memories of the book are:
- how Nien Cheng’s private home was turned into living quarters for several families, and regular household routines were disrupted by food rationing;
- how when destructive Red Guards came knocking, Nien Cheng tried to preserve, and in only some cases succeeded in preserving, some antiques she had in her house, by relinquishing them to be stored in government museums;
- and how after she was arrested, she had to live in a freezing concrete cell, where her food was insufficient and her clothing was insufficiently warm, yet she maintained exquisite poise and self-assurance.
A few passages from the book are reproduced below.
