Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #96680 in Books
• Published on: 1993-06-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 688 pages

J.G. Ballard, Sunday Times
Immensely moving and unsettling; an unforgettable portrait of the brain-death of a nation’

Synopsis
Through the lives of three different women - grandmother, mother and daughter - this book tells the story of 20th-century China. At times scarcely credible in the details it reveals of the suffering of millions of ordinary Chinese people, it is an unforgettable record of tyranny, hope and ultimate survival under conditions of extreme harshness. In 1924, at the age of 15, the author's grandmother became the concubine of a powerful warlord, whom she was seldom to see during the ten years of their "marriage". Her daughter, born in 1931, experienced the horrors of Japanese occupation in Manchuria as a schoolgirl, and after their surrender joined the Communist-led underground fighting Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang. She rose to be a senior Communist official, but was imprisoned three times. Her husband, also a high official and one of the very first to join the Communists, was relentlessly persecuted, imprisoned and finally sent to a labour camp where, physically broken and disillusioned, he lost his sanity. The author herself grew up during the Cultural Revolution, at the time of the personality cult of Mao and the worst excesses of the Gang of Four.

She joined the Red Guard but after Mao's death she was to become one of the first Chinese students to study abroad.

From the Publisher
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 unanimous critical acclaim, and was named the winner of the 1992 NCR Book Award and the 1993 British Book of the Year Award.

Customer Reviews

Gripping, terrible, beautiful story
I've been glued to this book for the past fortnight - it is so vivid that it feels like you're actually there, in China. Calm gardens, with streams, peach blossoms and flowers form the back drop to many of the scenes, and this beautiful natural landscape contrasts with the mindless violence and disorder of the human world.

Jung Chang's writing is deceptively simple and you truly relate and identify both with the narrator and her family. This means that it's like a gripping novel, as well as biography.

Plus, this book gives you an insider view of the irrationality of Chinese Communism and shows George Orwell's nightmare vision of '1984' to be more accurate than ever. Yet, the book never lapses into tedious explanations or arguments, teaching us history without any effort.

Power is an end, not a means
Jung Chang's unforgettable masterpiece says more about modern China than all ideological or political disputations together. It is history with a moving human touch, a gripping physical tale.
As an example, her analysis of the Cultural Revolution is outstanding: A bunch of arrogant children of high CP officials creates a pro-Mao movement. The master manipulator Mao uses them for the creation of a youth army and for the smashing of his political opponents. Millions of innocent Chinese are slaughtered, crippled or humiliated in an eight year wave of senseless (not for Mao) turmoil and social upheaval ( no doctors, no teachers, no scientists, no musicians...).
The CR shows that for Mao individual lives (except his own) were totally unimportant. Paramount was that he retained his power.

Jung Chang's book is a history of old and new feudalism. In the old one, there were warlords (and before, an emperor), in the new one, a party leader.
In both feudalisms, power was a synonym for survival in the struggle for life. It meant food, shelter, women, an army, loyal followers, perfect bureaucrats. The most 'cunning' survived in the brutal power struggles.
The author's portrait of Mao's character is profoundly characteristic: 'He was a restless fight promoter. He understood ugly human instincts such as envy and resentment and knew how to mobilize them for his ends. He ruled by getting people to hate each other. Mao had managed to turn people into the ultimate weapon of dictatorship.'

The missionaries of the communist gospel, like her father, a loyal and honest party bureaucrat, were killed (literally or psychologically) by the opportunists, careerists and cynics, who instinctively understood that power is an end, not a means, for instance, to better the living standard of the population.

During Mao's reign the overall atmosphere in China was FEAR ('people did not dare even to think'). In Mao'a paradise (not that of his subjects) disinformation and total censorship were the law in order to keep the Chinese population under his yoke.

The similarities with Stalin's Soviet Union are all too evident.

Jung Chang's mighty portrait of three generations of female victims of dictatorship (today still the most common form of government in the world) is an indirect cry for democracy.

This book is a must read.

This has to be read to be believed
Wild Swans is a magnificent book, telling the story of a family over three generations from the Boxer Rebellion, to the Peoples Revolution and the Cultural Revolutions. It can be said that China has a most colourful history, but this story is very very black in parts. Wild Swans will bring you on a journey of love and hope, and it will also throw you into a pit of dispare. Jung Changs experiences through her own eyes and that of her family are brought to life in this book. The imagery is vivid and the emmotions will grab you and tie you down. Whilst reading Wild Swans I felt anger and hatred at Mao and his minions.I found the events of the cultural revolution insane, Why? I must have asked this a hundred times. Yet Changs explains Mao's magnetism, his ability to manipulate the masses, and the fear he drove deep into the peoples hearts. With one hand he would offer hope and with the other he would bring suffering. Wild Swans is a prime example of the fight of the human spirit. It is within us all and Changs has brought her familys spirit to life in this book. If you are considering going to China read this book. It gives a great insight into the minds of the Chinese people. All though times have changed, they are still a tough, hardworker and honest people who simply hope for a good life.