My Name Is Number 4: A True Story from the Cultural Revolution

by Ting-xing Ye

A powerful and passionate memoir, My Name Is Number 4 is the gripping tale of one girl's life growing up during China's Cultural Revolution.

Number Four will have a difficult life. These are the words that were uttered upon Ting-xing Ye's birth. Soon this prophecy would prove only too true. . . .

Here is the real-life story about the fourth child in a family torn apart by China's Cultural Revolution. After the death of both of her parents, Ting-xing and her siblings endured brutal Red Guard attacks on their schools and even in their home. At the age of sixteen, Ting-xing is exiled to a prison farm far from the world she knows.

How she struggled through years of constant terror while keeping her spirit intact is at the heart of My Name Is Number 4. Haunting and inspiring, Ting-xing Ye's personal account of this horrific period in history is one that no reader will soon forget.

240 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 2, 2008

About the author

Ting-xing Ye, author of the best-selling memoir, A Leaf in the Bitter Wind, was born in Shanghai, China, in 1952, the fourth of five children born to a factory owner and his wife. At sixteen she was “sent down” to a prison farm during the Cultural Revolution, spending six years there before being admitted to Beijing University. She took a degree in English Literature, then began a seven year career as English interpreter for the national government in Shanghai. Ye came to Canada in 1987. She has been a child-care worker, bank clerk, and secretary. She published her first picture book in 1998. She also writes Young Adult fiction and non-fiction.