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A new edition of one of the best-selling and best-loved books of recent years. The publication of Wild Swans in 1991 was a worldwide phenomenon. Not only did it become the best-selling non-fiction book in British publishing history, with sales of well over two million, it was received with... read more

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Jung Chang is a teen during the reign of Mao. Her autobiography tells of her hardships, her involvementes and her eventual escape during this time period in China. It also tells of her parents and great grandparents involvment in Mao's China, following three generations. This heartwrenching... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Jung Chang is a teen during the reign of Mao. Her autobiography tells of her hardships, her involvementes and her eventual escape during this time period in China. It also tells of her parents and great grandparents involvment in Mao's China, following three generations. This heartwrenching novel is brutally honest and the fact that its non-fiction makes it both harder and better to read. Jung Chang now lives in the U.S and the different way of life is obvious when compared to life in China at that time.

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
Show all 34 characters
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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
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • The other hallmark of Maoism, it seemed to me, was the reign of ignorance.
    Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers
  • 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?
    Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers
  • This absurd situation reflected not only Mao’s ignorance of how an economy worked, but also an almost metaphysical disregard for reality,
    Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
  • 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).
    Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers
  • 'Where there is a will to condemn, there is evidence,' as the Chinese saying has it.
    Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers
Show all 12 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

At the age of fifteen my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord general, the police chief of a tenuous national government of China.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 232 of 1286 in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. (authoritative list)
This is book 99 of 145 in Whitcoulls Top 100 (2011). (authoritative list)
This is book 87 of 121 in Whitcoulls Top 100 (2012). (authoritative list)
This is book 11 of 97 in Waterstone's Top 100 Books of the 20th Century. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Jung Chang (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Margareta Ekilof (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Country: United Kingdom
Publication Date: September 1991
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 720

Classification edit see section history

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

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