Wild Swans (1991) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

• Jung Chang: Narrator of the book which chronicles her family through three generations. She grows up in Communist China and is a young woman during the Cultural Revolution
• De-hong: Jung's mother, a Communist High ranking official
• Yu-fang: Jung's grandmother, a former Concubine
• Wang Yu: Jung's father, a high ranking Communist Official who joined the Party in its infancy
• Dr. Xia: Jung Chang's grandmothers' second husband; a famed physician.
• Chairman Mao: Head of the Chinese communist party.
• Zhou Enlai: Premier of the Communist regime-the only practical member of the top administration
• Mrs. Ting: Vindictive high official known for making the lives miserable of those she has personal grudges with. A force of power during the Cultural Revolution.
• Mrs. Shau: A Rebel party leader in Jung's father's department
• Liu Shaoqi: Mao's number two officer until the Cultural Revolution.
• Nana: A friend of Jung's
• Lin Biao: A high officer in the Communist government under Mao
• Cousin Hu: A cousin of Jung's grandmother who is forced to hide with her family during the reign of the Japanese.
• Mme. Mao: Mao's wife who is famous for throwing the country into upheaval to satisfy her own destructive agendas.
• Xiao-fang: Jung's youngest brother
• Mr. Ying: Add a description of this character.
• Bing: A male friend of Jung's
• Mr. Kuang
• Jin-ming: Jung's oldest brother
• Kuomintang: The Republic of China, led by Chiang Kai-Shek. The rightist government that was in charge of China during the Second World War. It fell to the Communists shortly thereafter, with the exception of Taiwan where its remnants fled.
• Khrushchev: Russian Communist leader after Joseph Stalin.
• Xiao-hong: Jung's sister
• Yong
• Dong
• Dr. Jen: A doctor in Jung's hometown
• Zhang
• Nixon: 37th President of the United States.
• Tao Zhu
• Xiao-hei: Jung's middle brother
• Lu Xun: A famous XXth century Chinese writer.
• Chen Boda
• Chen Mo
• Miss Tanaka: Japanese teacher of Jung Chang's mother, whom her family hides when Japan is overthrown in Manchukuo.
• General Xue Zhi-hong: Jung's Grandfather-chief of police in the warlord government of Peking 1922-24

Quotes edit see section history

• “I loathed these expeditions and hated the fact that our labour, and our whole existance, was being used for a shoddy political game.”

  Jung Chang

• “The restraints which had kept them silent about politics before still prevented them from opening their minds to us. Now it was even less possible to speak. The situation was so complex and confusing that they could not understand it themselves. What could they possibly say to us that would make us understand? And what use would it have been anyway? There was nothing anyone could do. What was more, knowledge itself was dangerous. As a result, my siblings and I were totally unprepared for the Cultural Revoluion, although we had a vague feeling of impending catastrophe.”

  Jung Chang

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• The other hallmark of Maoism, it seemed to me, was the reign of ignorance.

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• The core of his thinking seemed to be that human struggles were the motivating force of history, and that in order to make history 'class enemies' had to be continuously created en masse. I wondered whether there were any other philosophers whose theories had led to the suffering and death of so many. I thought of the terror and misery to which the Chinese population had been subjected. For what?

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• This absurd situation reflected not only Mao’s ignorance of how an economy worked, but also an almost metaphysical disregard for reality,

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• The need to obtain authorization for an unspecified 'anything' was to become a fundamental element in Chinese Communist rule. It also meant that people learned not to take any action on their own initiative.

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• The whole nation slid into doublespeak. Words became divorced from reality, responsibility, and people’s real thoughts. Lies were told with ease because words had lost their meanings—and had ceased to be taken seriously by others.

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• Because her family was not an intellectual one and did not hold any official post, and because she was a girl, she was not given a name at all. Being the second daughter, she was simply called 'Number Two Girl' (Er-ya-tou).

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• Throughout Chinese history, when one person was condemned sometimes the entire clan—men, women, and children, even newborn babies—was executed. Execution could extend to cousins nine times removed (zhu-lian jiu-zu). Someone being accused of a crime could endanger the lives of a whole neighborhood.

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• Wherever we went as we traveled down the Yangtze we saw the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution: temples smashed, statues toppled, and old towns wrecked. Little evidence remained of China’s ancient civilization. But the loss went even deeper than this. Not only had China destroyed most of its beautiful things, it had lost its appreciation of them, and was unable to make new ones. Except for the much-scarred but still stunning landscape, China had become an ugly country.

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• Following the custom, my great-grandfather was married young, at fourteen, to a woman six years his senior. It was considered one of the duties of a wife to help bring up her husband.

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• 'Where there is a will to condemn, there is evidence,' as the Chinese saying has it.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• North China
• Red Chengdu
• Peking
• Sichuan
• Manchuria
• Japan
• Ningnan
• Manchukuo
• Tianjin
• Shanghai
• United States
• Great Wall
• Yixian
• Iinzhou
• Heaven
• Lulong
• Nanjing
• Soviet Union
• Mukden
• Chongqing
• Taiwan
• Yunnan
• Tibet
• America
• Federation
• Miyi
• Britain
• Chengdu Plain
• Confucius
• Chaoyang
• Stalin
• Korea
• Russia
• Tiananmen Square
• Zhanjiang

First Sentence edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Jung Chang (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Margareta Ekilof (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• NCR Book Award (1992)
• British Book of the Year (1993)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: CT1828.C478 A3 1991
• Dewey: 951.04

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › History › Asia › China
• Books › History › World › 20th Century
• Books › Biographies & Memoirs › Specific Groups › Women

More Books Like This edit see section history