What's the Name of That Book??? discussion

Alright, I read part of an autobiography in May/June of 2015 about Mao Zedong coming to power in China but I can't remember the title, author, or any people mentioned in it

These are things I remember about it:
• it was told from the perspective of a young girl, beginning between when she was 6 and 12
• she was from a well off family, her parents worked at the hospital
• I don't believe she had siblings but there was a neighbor boy she thought of as family
• She got a new dress, with colorful cloth, until Mao Zedong came to power and that kind of wealth was shamed
• her most prized possesion was a doll
• the neighbor tried to escape China at one point, which involved crossing a river, and she didn't know if he had or not until he came back, as a soldier, and betrayed her family, telling the other soldiers who raided homes where all their possesions and money were hidden to save his life
• they lived in an apartment building, I believe
• she was bullied at school because her family was against communism
• the cover may have had tea on it? All these years, one of the main things I've remembered is that there was something to do with tea

A list of books it's not:
• Wild Swans
• Feather in the Storm
• Red Scarf Girl
• Red Azalea
• Autobiography of a Chinese Girl
• Falling Leaves
• Girl Under a Red Moon
• Vermillion Gate
• Red Flower of China
• The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
• To the Edge of Sky
• The Sun Shines Over Sangaan River

Harley, I added some details to the header/topic title at the top of the page, so your book might be recognized from that description alone. Many members only read the headers.

You can update it by clicking the small "edit" link after the header. This only works on the full Desktop website - not the Mobile website or app. (On the Mobile website, click the "Desktop version" link at the bottom of the page.)

Eighth Moon: The True Story of a Young Girl's Life in Communist China?

Many people talk about Communist China; few do anything about it. This young Chinese girl did. She left Mao's protective communal lap in 1962 when she was seventeen years old and about ready to fulfill her comradeship as an elementary school teacher, the profession decreed for her by the inexorable Red tape. Now in America with her family, Sansan tells the story of her childhood, her school and its labor service where garbage dump detail and construction work were more essential to ""good standing"" than grades in mathematics. In Tsientsin in North China, she and her schoolmates felt the pinch of rations and hunger following the ""Great Leap Forward"" in 1958, and much of the usual Western version of the anti-communistic apocrypha is reiterated here. Aiming for an ""inconspicuous political file,"" Sansan managed the minimum in Communistic allegiance required to keep her in the State's good graces. Sansan did not leave for a Western Promised Land, but to join her real mother who, she had discovered, was living in Hong Kong. Her story is touching and convincing through human interest, not political acumen--and perhaps the more illuminating because it seems less dramatic and more typical than the propagandistic picture of the Young Pioneer generation in Red China.

No response, moving to Abandoned folder.

Harley (OP) was last active on the site in May 2021.