Profiles in courage

SOME people's bravery seems little short of lunacy. Employed as a photographer on the Heilongjiang Daily, Li Zhensheng swiftly learned all about revolutionary discipline, even before the cultural revolution was launched in May 1966. He was paraded in front of his workmates, had his diary and love-letters seized and was forced to write a lengthy self-criticism of his “bourgeois thoughts”—all because he had sneaked off for a meal and a couple of beers with four friends when he was supposed to be living the life of a peasant.