She met with frustration only in the late 1960s, when she was told that, being a foreigner, she couldn't "reform oneself in the vast rural areas" by choosing to become a farmer in poverty-stricken areas, as many of her peers did passionately at the call of then Chairman Mao Zedong.
She was compensated in 1971 with a job at a local copper factory one that was envied by many at a time workers were the most respected members of society.
The picture became less rosy as the "cultural revolution" developed. In 1973 a group of teenage Red Guards drove Sara Imas and her family out of the villa.
Sara was wrongly accused of being an Israeli spy, and was put into prison for three years until the "cultural revolution" came to an end in 1976.
Upon release from prison, Sara Imas went back to her job at the factory and was married in 1974 to one of her colleagues. The couple had a son the following year and remained happily married until the 1980s.