Other Make a Difference Day celebs:
Wally Lamb brings the expressiveness of writing to prison inmates
Bestselling author Matthew Klam is enriched by a handicapped child
Robert Putnam, writer of Bowling Alone, is optimistic toward youth
Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays With Morrie, finds his late teacher's words live on.
Arthur author Marc Brown believes where kids read, kids help others
Christopher Paul Curtis, author of Bud, Not Buddy, hails a hero he overlooked -- his dad.
Marc Parent, Turning Stones author, makes a difference to a dying woman's cat.
Ana Castillo, poet and author, tells how a gathering replenishes women who make a difference.
Ann Hood, author of Ruby and the upcoming Do Not Go Gentle: My Search for Miracles in a Cynical Time, comforts the spirit by feeding the sad, the lost and the lonely.
Justin Timberlake makes a difference through music
Wish You Well writer David Baldacci, learns a lesson from young writers
Patricia Cornwell, writer of The Last Precinct recalls what a world-renowned evangelist did for a scared little girl

Anchee Min, author of Becoming Madame Mao, on the brutality of Chinese life and what she did about it.

"Education saves lives"

t WAS SPRING 1994, and I had just finished traveling to nine countries to speak about Red Azalea, a memoir of growing up in the '50s and '60s as a Little Red Guard under Chairman Mao. I was back in China from my new home in the United States and was sitting on a squeaky old bed in my parents' apartment in Shanghai, leafing through newspaper clippings my father had collected for me.

Two stories caught my eye. One described an extreme shortage of teachers in rural areas, as teachers took advantage of China's economic boom by leaving for better-paying jobs in the city. Millions of children were left behind with no one to teach them.

The other story was that of a peasant mother who, disappointed when she gave birth to another girl, drowned her five little daughters. (Culturally, this woman was doubly cursed: She ignored the state rule of one child per family, and female babies are not greeted with the same enthusiasm as males.) Regardless of circumstance, the fact that this woman could drown her children stunned me.

On the surface, the stories seem unrelated. But my father, a retired teacher, traced them to the same root: If you want to make a beast out of a human being, take away education.

My father passed me another clipping, carefully cut out, folded and placed inside his astronomy book. It was about a dying man, a village schoolteacher, whose last wish was that his only daughter give up her education to take over his job and continue to school local children. The daughter honored her father's wish. She was 14.

The story touched me deeply. If only the mother who murdered her five daughters -- who placed her newborn daughter in a bucket, let it go downstream and watched it fill with water -- had had an education: Her human heart would have stopped her.

In a strange way, I identified with her: I was ill-educated as a girl. I was a product of Communist brainwashing. If I had been sent to Vietnam during the war, I would have had no problem strapping on a bomb and blowing up American soldiers and myself, too.

It wasn't until after the Cultural Revolution, more so after I came to the United States, that education restored my human element. I gained my sense of self and a sense of compassion for the value of human lives. I saw for the first time what we Chinese, as a nation, did wrong during the time of Mao. It was a

mass crime. I recognized my own weakness as a defeat of the human spirit and I was able to feel remorse. And I was able to write about these experiences in that memoir and two later novels.

My father told me he would be pleased if I would learn from the village teacher and his daughter. Indeed, I wanted to promote education and self-value in women. And at the time, I believed that I would be more useful in China than in America.

I felt rewarded when I was stopped on the street by a woman who had just lost her job. In my story, she saw hope for herself: "If you could go to America not knowing English and come back a world-class writer, I don't see why I can't manage to land another job."

I'm embarrassed when given credit for inspiring others and making a difference. Compared to the village teacher and his 14-year-old daughter, I have made practically no sacrifice.

Next Week: She's Come Undone author Wally Lamb

Photo by DAN MacMEDAN for USA WEEKEND