My ancestors -- My home in Beijing -- Elementary school in occupied Beijing -- My prime movers -- On campus at Peking University -- My first trip to the bottom -- Life in the fields -- Into the University of Science and Technology -- Days under the dynasty -- Re-education at Bagong Mountain -- Arrival in Hefei -- Turn toward astrophysics -- Modernization at the end of the 1970s -- Stepping out of China -- In the tides of reform -- Vice President of the University of Science and Technology of China -- Bourgeois liberalism -- Dissident -- Spring 1989 -- Thirteen months -- Afterword by Perry Link.