Zheng Nian is a typical "socialite of the Republic of China". Her original name was Yao Nianyuan. She was born in Beijing in 1915. Her father was an overseas student who returned from studying in Japan and was a senior official of the Beiyang government.

She received an aristocratic education since she was a child, and later went abroad to study for a master's degree at the London School of Economics.

This kind of education has cultivated her into a lady with an aristocratic atmosphere, and the word "education" has been deeply ingrained in her bones.

Zheng Nian was very beautiful when she was young. She appeared on the cover of "Beiyang Pictorial" four times while she was in middle school.

For such a girl with a good family background, good looks, and good academic performance, there are naturally many suitors around her, but she is arrogant and arrogant, and no one can look down on her until she meets her while studying abroad. Zheng Kangqi, who was studying for a doctorate, fell in love.

The two got married in London. After both returned to China, Zheng Kangqi worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and later served as the general manager of the Shanghai Branch of British Shell Oil Company.

After the founding of New China, their family has always maintained an elegant lifestyle. They live in a nine-room, four-bathroom garden house with a maid, nanny and cook. I have tens of thousands of yuan in deposits in mainland banks, and I also have large deposits in HSBC Bank in Hong Kong.

In 1957, Zheng Kangqi passed away. In memory of her husband, she changed her name to Zheng Nian. Accustomed to being a young mistress, she returned to the workplace and was hired as a consultant to the general manager of Asia Petroleum Company. She received a good salary and a high status. The death of her husband did not have a big impact on her life.

In September 1966, Zheng Nian was unjustly imprisoned due to his experience of studying in the UK and working for a long-term foreign company.

For the next six and a half years, she was imprisoned in a small room in a detention center.

First of all, she has to face an extremely harsh living environment. She lived in a garden house for the first half of her life. It was only after she went to prison that she realized that such a place existed in the world. The walls are covered with peeling dust, which will fall down without touching it. When I go to sleep at night, the bed is already covered with dust.

What is more unbearable than these is the endless loneliness. She was the subject of special treatment and was imprisoned alone in a detention center room with no one to talk to and only four cold walls to keep her company all day long.

Many people who had been in prison in that era went crazy or died, but Zheng Nian survived tenaciously with his steely will and belief.

She fights against fate with resistance and struggle. Before she was imprisoned, she defended her inherent lifestyle, refused to change her cheongsam, and continued to pursue an emotional life.

After Zhengdang was imprisoned, her resistance became fierce, she was disobedient and aggressive, and was called a "crazy old woman" by the guards.

She would never accept any imposition of guilt. The detention center asked her to write a confession document, and she signed it as "criminal". Every time she took the trouble to add the words "has not committed any crime" in front of "criminal". After rewriting the confession materials many times, the word "criminal" was no longer written on the paper given to her.

In those days, many people turned to others to throw dirty water on others in order to get rid of their own crimes, but she never falsely accused others. In order to get rid of the maddening loneliness, she sometimes deliberately argued with the guards, which often resulted in punches and kicks, but she never tired of it, thinking that it would help maintain her mental health.

Her hands were handcuffed behind her back for a long time, and she had to zip up the side zipper of her trousers after each use. Dule’s wound was painful, but she would rather have it deepen than wear her clothes. Not neat. A woman delivering food kindly advised her to cry loudly so that the guards would notice that her hands were becoming disabled. What Zheng Nian thought about was: "That kind of crying sound is too childish and uncivilized."

Even in such harsh conditions, she wanted to improve the living environment as much as possible. Do your best to maintain your grace.

She saved some of the rice she had for each meal to use as paste, and put toilet paper one by one on the wall next to the bed, so that her bedding would not be blocked by the wall. The dust on the bed was stained; she borrowed needle and thread to sew two towels into toilet seats; she cut herself a handkerchief and made an eye mask...

Prison life destroyed her Of health, she got uterine cancer. When the detention center decided to release her on the grounds of "physical discomfort," she refused to leave the prison and demanded that she apologize publicly in newspapers in Shanghai and Beijing. Eventually, she agreed to be released from prison because she cared about her only daughter.

After being released from prison, Zheng Nian was almost sixty years old. Her daughter encountered an accident while she was in prison and was beaten to death and thrown downstairs.

At the age of sixty-five, Zheng Nian went to the United States and quickly adapted to life abroad.

At the age of seventy-two, in memory of her daughter, she wrote the only book in her life, "The Tribulation of Life and Death in Shanghai," in English. It caused a sensation upon publication and earned her generous royalties.

With this royalties, Zheng Nian returned to a comfortable life in her later years. She lived alone in a high-end apartment in Washington, giving lectures, making friends, and sponsoring young students from China.

She lived until she was ninety-four years old before passing away peacefully.

She wrote in the book: "When the sunset gradually sets in the west, a kind of melancholy and nostalgia will hit my heart." But she still "got up on time the next morning, optimistic and energetic to welcome the new day God has given me.”

The true aristocratic lady lies not in what she enjoys, but in what she endures. As Flaubert said: "A true nobleman is not that he is born a nobleman, but that he still maintains the style and dignity of a nobleman until his death."

Zheng Nian, this person has nobility integrated into his bones. A woman worthy of being a true noble.