Two hundred words, and the future she dreamed of would be within reach.
That is, 200 words condemning her American father, regurgitating the Chinese Communist Party line that he was “a servile follower of capitalism and an enemy of the Chinese people,” and declaring that she was severing all ties with him.
“Write that,” a school official instructed 18-year-old Teresa Buczacki, “and the doors of Beijing University or Tsinghua University”—the country’s most elite schools—“will be open to you.”
An American in China
Buczacki, who writes under the pen name Han Xiu, was born in New York in 1946 to an American army officer and a Chinese actress. Her parents separated when she was 1 1/2 years old, and she was sent to China as a toddler to live with her grandmother in Beijing.Her father had seen her only once, when she was born, but that was enough to incur repercussions. Even before Party leader Mao Zedong was preparing to launch the Cultural Revolution, all those with ties to the United States were deemed imperialists who undermined the communist cause. The regime stoked anti-American sentiment across society.
Though Buczacki’s mother tried to hide her family’s background, her grandmother always told the little girl that her father was an American officer who had aided the Chinese people in the fight against the Japanese empire during World War II.
She had never felt ashamed of her background, and instead yearned for what she considered her homeland. “Although I didn’t understand America well, ... I knew clearly from the start that I belonged in [America],” she later wrote in her semi-autobiographical book, “Refraction: An American Girl in Mainland China.”
Even as Buczacki was ostracized and ridiculed by her peers in school, she excelled and dreamt of becoming a ship designer. When she refused the regime’s demand to pen those 200 words of falsehoods, she knew she was sealing her own fate. But she was resolute.
“No matter how those in power, and their ignorant or knowing subjects, tried to defame him, I, as his daughter, will never forget him,” Buczacki wrote in “Refraction.” “From then on, I swore to myself that I would never betray my conscience, never surrender to coercive power, even if I have to endure countless suffering [as a result].”
She was tasked with hard labor in the harsh environs of Xinjiang, in China’s far west. The physical toil and stress pushed her to the brink of death. When Buczacki finally escaped and returned to America in 1978, at the age of 32, she weighed only 95 pounds.
But she was alive. She was the first American involuntarily held in China to return to the United States since the Korean War, but her tenacious bravery set a precedent: She would not be the last. “My return proved that China’s solemn assertions in more than a hundred meetings in Warsaw over 15 years that no Americans were detained in China were just bald-faced lies,” she wrote in “The Unwanted,” another one of her books.
Now in America, armed with a pen and newfound freedom, she spoke her mind.
“Publishing books in America, you’re not restricted by the ideas you stand for, or your faith, or your political background,” she said. She began writing, penning over 50 books in Chinese, including works on the arts and history. In “Refraction” and “The Unwanted,” which are available in English, she details some of her harrowing experiences.
Forced Labor
The Chinese Communist Party assigned Buczacki hard labor on a farm in a remote village in Shanxi Province. But to avoid potential arrest during the Cultural Revolution, she decided it was safer to be as far from Beijing government authorities as possible. In 1967, at age 21, she moved more than 2,000 miles to Xinjiang, a traditionally pastoral region, and applied to join the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a paramilitary organization tasked with developing the area—in order to exploit its resources, according to Buczacki. She spent long days chopping down trees and clearing land, and nights sleeping in a crude underground shelter.The regime’s barbarism was on dramatic display. During her first year, she was forced, like millions of others in China during the Cultural Revolution, to attend a political rally where those accused by the Party as “counter-revolutionaries” were publicly denounced and tortured. Buczacki couldn’t stand to watch the brutal scene. As she attempted to leave, a blunt force suddenly struck her head: A soldier had hit her with the butt of his rifle to stop her. The world went black.
Three days later, she awoke, covered in sand, in the Gobi Desert. It was unclear how she had ended up there, though it was likely that soldiers had left her there to die. Weak and injured, she crawled back to camp. She wouldn’t realize until decades later that the traumatic injury to her brain would be lifelong.
For nine years, she suffered in Xinjiang, starved and overworked, surviving only through the kindness of neighbors and Uyghur friends who came to her aid. “Their resilience and their sense of helplessness—I understood them deeply. Yet they always treated me so kindly,” Buczacki said.
In 1976, Mao’s death was followed by factional infighting. A new leader, Deng Xiaoping, came to power and reversed Mao’s policies, and Buczacki was called back to Beijing by Deng’s office. She started looking for a way to the United States no matter the cost. She knew the two countries were negotiating the terms of their formal diplomatic relations and was certain a path would open up.
Institute in Taiwan. They stayed in the city of Kaohsiung. (Courtesy of Teresa Buczacki)
In 1977, a path did open up. Buczacki walked into the U.S. Liaison Office, expired childhood passport in hand, on President’s Day, a holiday that should have found the office empty. By a stroke of luck, she found American officers. Noticing her U.S. passport, they promised to help.
It meant that she would now be targeted by Chinese officials, who knew she had succeeded in making contact, but she was undaunted. They continually denied her the proper paperwork, but she never stopped applying. “You could apply for 100 years, but don’t forget, one day you will die,” she recalled an official telling her.
“You’re right,” she calmly replied. “If I die, please remember to send my ashes to the U.S. Liaison Office. My determination to go back to my country won’t be moved by your imperiousness.”
In 1978, Buczacki received permission to leave. She was finally going home.
Life Renewed in America
When Buczacki arrived in America, she didn’t speak a word of English. When she was growing up, the communist regime forbade her from learning it. After a doctor examined her, he told her to rest up: Her days were numbered, and she should enjoy them without strain. She was diagnosed with severe anemia, low blood pressure, arrhythmia, gastric ulcers, nephritis, and near blindness in her left eye. But she told herself, “If a person’s first 30 years were ruined, after that, every day is an extra day earned.”
In 1990, she published her first book, “Refraction.” It was painful to revisit the memories, but she felt she had the responsibility to unveil them.
The communists never got their 200 words from Buczacki. But when it came to writing about truth, and humanity, she was unstoppable. Silenced for so long, the words now tumbled forth faster than she could write.
In 2002, she began experiencing bouts of excruciating nerve pain caused by her traumatic brain injury. Between episodes, “I pushed myself to the limit to write,” Buczacki said. “When the pain came again, I would stop writing. I kept doing this [over the years].” In the decade before she underwent brain surgery to alleviate the pain, she wrote 17 books.
“What I care most about is humanity—the spark in humanity—which will never perish.”
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