On Oct 1, 1949, when Mao Zedong proclaimed the official establishment of the People's Republic of China, the aims of the Communist Party of China were still largely unknown to the majority of the war-weary Chinese. Now a new kind of state had emerged- a People's Republic. People wondered with varying emotions what new changes this would bring to their daily lives and to their country. Zhang Da-Peng's novelistic memoir of his first four decades, Life under Mao Zedong's Rule, is a striking and chillingly unforgettable response to this question, for three of these decades encompassed the entire...