Nien Cheng was born into a well-to-do Chinese family in 1915. Her family was able to give her a college education, including post-graduate work at the London School of economics. That's where she met her future husband.
But the time she spent in Great Britain may have been a time bomb of sorts.
In 1966, at the age of 51, Nien Cheng, by then a widow, was arrested and accused by the Chinese Communist government of being a Britiah spy.
For nearly seven years Nien Cheng was imprisoned and sometimes tortured.
After her eventual release, she came to the United States.
