Wild Swans

Just as I turned to Trevor Noah’s memoir for answers about apartheid while in South Africa, I devoured this book while in China to more deeply understand how the country was shaped by Communism.

The author’s personal history is frightening and raw—at times hard to read—but it is important to understand a few layers deeper than what the news can offer or, in my case, what tourists get served on visits to China. It’s a wrenching story that has stayed with me for years. 

This book was published after the demonstration at Tiananmen Square, Beijing which ended in bloodshed. With this book, I felt finally somebody was giving an honest account of life in China in the 20th Century and  under the Chinese Communist Party.

But this is no regular history book; it is Jung Chang’s personal account following the lives of three generations of women in her own family: Jung Chang herself, her mother, and her grandmother. They endured so much, but I was struck by how united and loving they remained. They managed in the face of adversity to keep their humanity,… show more.

In 1966, I bought a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book which sold all over the world but, like almost everyone in the West, I had no idea of the brutal reality of the Cultural Revolution. In 1991, Jung Chang’s memoir took the world by storm and we could feel that reality. It is not just her story but also that of her grandmother and mother. That is the joy of memoir in all its variety. I later got to know an artist friend of Chang’s called Qu Leilei. Unlike her, Leilei and his family were at the heart of… show more.

Hugely famous, this book showcases China’s history through a personal lens, via three generations of the same family and the vast cultural changes they experience, from a grandmother’s life as a concubine to a mother turned revolutionary and finally the daughter’s own story as an international author. Not a light read, but compelling.

I was so transfixed by Jung Chang’s saga of her family in the 1990s that when I finished it, I immediately went back to the beginning and read it all over again. We in the West seemed to know so little about China then, and here was this very human and readable account of a totally different world, itself going through a period of seismic changes—and how three generations of women coped with it all.  There’s a strong impression of the importance of family, and through these heart-rending personal sagas, we do also begin to get to know China. It’s… show more.

What I love about this book is that while it is nonfiction, this generational story reads like a novel. The author’s grandmother was forced to be a warlord’s concubine; her mother, a young idealistic Communist, marched with Mao; and the author became a member of the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution. This book is a fantastic way for readers to learn about Chinese history.

The memory of this 'novel' – which crosses the line to biography for some – still gives me heartache. It offers the most fascinating insight into the demise of an Empire and the brutal, ruthless making of a communist nation, in which nothing is as superfluous and as expendable as human life. As such, it is reminiscent of my series and the making of Russia we know today. However, I left the last pages of Wild Swans unread, as the inhumane suffering so casually imposed on women was unbearable to witness. Still, I took so much away from it, above… show more.

A modern classic, a must-read for anyone interested in the history of China in the early 20th century, as seen through three generations of the author’s family: the author, her mother, and her grandmother. The narrative recounts Chinese people’s hallowing survival under Japanese occupation in Haerbin in northern China, the ideologies of the People’s Liberation Army, and the absurdity of the Cultural Revolution. I was stunned to see a world, full of life and culture, shattered and then rebuilt again, and the resilient women, left alone, hungry, charted their paths in a world upside down.

This book has stayed with me for years. In this sweeping memoir that’s a window on the female experience of 20th century China, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s smashed idealism as a young Maoist; and Chang’s own experience of torment and murder during the Cultural Revolution. All her life she’d been brainwashed into believing that Mao was god-like and could do no wrong. Then one day, by chance, she finds a smuggled copy of Newsweek where Mao is criticized for causing a famine. Her world crumbles and from… show more.