Ingrained, enthralled and overwhelmed with the prevailing creed, "Communism will one day seize the world," and following Mao's call to the young during the Cultural Revolution, Cheng Wang, a so-called ‘Educated Youth,’ boarded a train destined for a secluded village in Inner Mongolia for the compulsory period of re-education. For the next three grueling years in rural exile, he pondered how his once-privileged, loving family had been caught in a political undertow, and indeed how his own future might unfold.
From Tea to Coffee is the story of struggle and triumph during China’s modern-day cultural and political drama, and is a rare and personal account that showcases the Chinese national psyche. Like all political movements of the past, the Cultural Revolution was not the first of its kind, nor quite possibly the last, yet Cheng Wang, now at home in both America and in China, maintains an optimism that is rare and welcome in confronting today's social polarization in the East and in the West.