Swimming to Freedom

An extraordinary memoir of Communist China, the Cultural Revolution, and a yearning to be free

When Kent Wong was a young boy, his father, a patriotic Chinese official in the customs office in Hong Kong, joined an insurrection at work, allowing the family to return to the newly established People’s Republic of China. Hailed as heroes, they settled in the southern city of Canton. But Chairman Mao’s China was dangerous and unstable, with landlords executed en masse and millions dying of starvation during the Great Leap Forward.

In Swimming to Freedom, Kent Wong captures his childhood amidst revolutionary times, where boyish adventures and school days mixed with dire poverty and political persecution. Mao’s Hundred Flower Campaign had ensnared Kent’s father. A decade later, the Cultural Revolution closed schools, plunged the country into chaos, and scattered Kent and his sisters to disparate villages, where they struggled to eke out a bare existence. As the son of a “capitalist rightist,” Kent began to realize that with higher education closed to him, he had no future in China. So when he hooked up with a dissident underground and heard about fellow countrymen, known as “Freedom Swimmers,” braving great hardship to reach freedom by swimming across miles of open water to Hong Kong, he decided to join them, risking his life for a better future. A gripping, heart-rending journey, this memoir is a moving testament to the human spirit.