Anhua Gao has a big score to settle - and is unfamiliar with the adage about not speaking ill of the dead. 'Mao Zedong is the most vicious person in world history,' an agitated Gao said. 'Worse than Hitler, worse than Stalin. The worst tyrant. I don't think they should hang his portrait in Tiananmen Square. They should cremate him and turn the Beijing memorial hall into a museum of the horrors of his regime. He is China's symbol of shame.' Colours nailed unambiguously to mast, curses chasing each other between gasps, Gao vilified Mao on a recent visit to Hong Kong to promote her autobiography To The Edge Of The Sky. Elegant in a black cheongsam, she was incensed, and the book tells why.
Growing up in Nanjing as the daughter of party officials hailed as 'exemplary revolutionaries' by the Great Helmsman, Gao enjoyed a privileged early life. But by 12 she had lost her father to bone cancer and her mother to pleurisy, and her precarious place in the world became apparent.
'Once your parents are dead they don't consider your good family background,' said Gao. 'The candle is burned out and everything is gone.' With her two sisters and brother she was placed in the harsh care of the state, before being caught up in the neuroses, rumour and counter-rumour of the Cultural Revolution. Having chosen to join the PLA to avoid 're-education' in the fields alongside the peasants, Gao confided in letters to elder sister Pei-gen her fear that politics was ruining the country. Pei-gen denounced Gao, knowing she was threatening her life. 'She was envious because I was doing well. I cannot forgive my sister. She's very vicious,' said Gao. 'I haven't seen her for nearly 30 years and I have no wish to see her again.' But for once, her parents were able to help from beyond the grave: their reputation ensured Gao was discharged from the army for health reasons and avoided punishment.
She began work at a factory as the reign of terror continued. Gao writes that thousands of colleagues were branded conspirators and class enemies; at Orwellian rallies many were tortured into confessing to crimes against the state. Then at 25 she married former soldier Zhao Lin, and had daughter Yan in 1975. 'He was a jealous, angry man,' said Gao, whom Lin regularly beat until he was killed by a gas leak. By then, she had taught herself English with the assistance of Charles Dickens' novel A Tale Of Two Cities, which she copied out word for word, and was working as an interpreter in Shenzhen. That security crumbled in 1985 when she was accused of being a spy, ostensibly because of her fluency in English. Dickens was the prosecution's star witness. 'The bosses didn't speak English, and suspected anyone who did. On one deal I disagreed with a corrupt manager who ordered electronic parts from a woman he was having an affair with, even though her price was too high.' The phoney whiff of espionage dumped her in jailed for 104 days. 'It was a terrible Her chance came when a friend sent her details to British magazine Saga asking for a pen-friend. She chose twice-divorced Harry Bennett because 'his letter was the most sincere. He also enclosed the largest photograph.' Bennett (a proud, protective figure who accompanied Gao here) flew to Beijing to meet Gao six months later. Visas and permits organised, they married in Nanjing in 1994 and Gao left for Britain - closing a childhood circle in the process. At nine, Gao writes, she stood on a chair looking for Britain on a map ? because Mao had begun the Great Leap Forward with the slogan: 'Catch up with Britain within 15 years', and she was intrigued. Unable to find it, her mother helped. 'There,' she said, 'on the edge of the sky.' Gao wrote the book partly to honour her parents; another reason, even though she is now a British citizen ('very good!') was to 'get justice done' in China. She hopes it will encourage others, as Jung Chang's Wild Swans spurred her. (She refutes suggestions she is jumping on any sentimental-memoir bandwagon, pointing out that Wild Swans, Adeline Yen Mah's Falling Leaves, Life And Death In Shanghai by Nien Cheng, and Edge deal with different upheavals.) But if she wants change (and she says she wants to do 'as much as possible for the good of China'), Gao is perhaps barking up the wrong dictator in refusing to criticise the current regime. Did she believe torture continues in Chinese prisons? Hesitantly, Gao answered: 'Torture ? er ? maybe instruments aren't used, but I think beating is common. The Government is improving human rights, although it's very slow. It's a lot better than under Mao,' she said, words again fighting with each other to get out, 'now people have some democracy. I don't want to appear a dissident, it's no good to me. I wouldn't do anything to oppose the Communist Party openly. I'll say what I want about Mao, but I support the policy of opening China to the world. The economy is first, everything else second. There is hope in the regime. I don't criticise the Government, therefore I shall be safe there.' The focus of Gao's anger may be historical, and she may have written her book from the safety of Kent. But she has suffered, and it would be churlish to criticise her wariness. She still travels to the mainland. Her daughter still lives there.