At such moments, the room would fall silent, and students would stare at their desks. When I looked up from the lectern and saw the bowed heads, my heart raced and my face grew hot. I found myself stammering, and I tried to change the subject; often, it took a few minutes before the mood returned to normal. Initially, considered these awful moments to be the times when I felt most like a foreigner.
But I came to realize it was the opposite: my body was experiencing something that must be common to young Chinese. The Party had created a climate so intense that the political became physical.
Excerpted from Other Rivers