In the memoir "In Search of My Homeland," Er Tai Gao chronicles his
years in China from his first imprisonment in a labor camp in 1959, to
his escape from China in 1991. Read an excerpt of this new book here at Stories for Life!
In Search of My Homeland
Lanzhou Number Ten Middle School was located on the north bank of the Yellow River on a foothill called Saltfield-Town-Temple-Dune, well outside the city. Not only was the name grating, the landscape was ugly. The newly built three-story school, resembling a gray matchbox, stood solitary above innumerable low and broken-down adobe houses, which, like rows of fish scales, extended downward to the river, where green orchards lined the banks. Beyond the grounds irrigated by the waterwheels, not a blade of grass grew. From the river's edge, a narrow dirt path twisted up for about ten li to our school. Continuing farther, the houses became fewer and fewer, until there was only the dirt-covered, adobe-colored mountain-barren, without trees, grass or stones-and behind it, more indistinguishable mountains. Looking from the highest peak, thousands upon thousands of mountains formed a greenish yellow expanse, and yet in that hard-featured monotony there was a fierce, untamed ruggedness.
