Doctor Who Was Followed By Ghosts, The

According to Chinese folklore, when his favourite daughter falls ill, Yanwang,
the ruler of the underworld, sends his servants to look for a doctor who has
as few ghosts as possible following him. This means that he is a better doctor
than others, because when a patient dies, the ghost follows and haunts the
doctor. Li Qunying, a Communist doctor of great dedication, undoubtedly had
fewer ghosts behind her. Yet her life was in many ways ill fated, as she
struggled through the Anti-Japanese War, the Civil War, the Korean War, the
great famine of the early '60s and numerous political movements, including the
notorious Cultural Revolution. The Great Leap Forward Movement tragically took
away her son Bingbing's life, and the persecution of her husband during the
Cultural Revolution took a serious toll on his health, and consequently led to
his early death. Besides enduring personal misfortune, she also witnessed the
suffering of the peasants, who were the majority of the population at the
grass-roots level and whose sorrowful stories have rarely been told. This
haunting memoir traces all of the major events of brutal twentieth-century
China, interweaving eyewitness history, folklore, superstition, and Dr. Li's
own first-hand accounts.