Ting-Xing Ye is a Chinese- Canadian author of young adult novels, as well as Leaf In A Bitter Wind, a best-selling autobiographical account of her life in Maoist China. Ye was born in Shanghai, China, in 1952, the fourth of five children. Her parents were a factory owner and his wife. Ye's parents died when she was a small child, leaving Ye and her four siblings in the care of her Great-Aunt. During the Cultural Revolution, Ye and her family were condemned as having "bad blood" and persecuted by the Communist regime, because their father had been a boss in a factory. At sixteen, like millions of other young Chinese men and women, Ye was exiled to a prison farm to "learn from the peasants" and be "reformed" by hard labor. On the farm, Ye was persecuted and suffered torture at the hands of her leaders. Ye spent six years laboring on the prison farm, before being admitted to Beijing University. She took a degree in English Literature, then began a seven year career as English interpreter for the national government in Shanghai. During that time she met her future husband, Canadian writer and educator William E. Bell who taught English at the Foreign Affairs College in Beijing. 

January 1st, 1952 in Shanghai (Age 72)