Launched in 1966 by Communist leader Mao Zedong, the Cultural Revolution plunged China into a decade of chaos. The education of millions of young people was disrupted and China was cut off from the rest of the world.

When students first started venturing out, it was still a country feeling the after effects of the Cultural Revolution.

Farhana Haider spoke to writer Zha Jianying in 2021. She was one of the first batch of Chinese students to arrive in the USA in the early 1980s.

(Photo: Zha Jianying. Credit: Simon Song/South China Morning Post via Getty Images)