Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
Jung Chang
Language: English
Pages: 538
ISBN: 0743246985
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author.
An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.
harsh posture, with his fists clenched, yelling: ‘Get back onto the bench!’ He did not want to be seen as soft on a ‘class enemy’. Blood trickled down the teacher’s forehead and coagulated on the side of his face. He, like the other teachers, was accused of all sorts of outlandish crimes; but they were really there because they were graded, and therefore the best, or because some pupils had grudges against them. I learned in later years that the pupils in my school behaved relatively mildly
from gentle, shy, or lovely. She was all hysterical ugliness. Thus was Jin-ming’s first love extinguished. But he shouted back. The girl left the room and returned with an older Red Guard, the leader of the group. He started yelling so much his spittle splashed on Jin-ming, and he too pointed his rolled up belt at him. Then he stopped, realizing that they should not be washing their dirty linen in front of class enemies. He ordered Jin-ming to go back to the school to ‘wait for adjudication’.
University, 168 Champagne, 143 Chang Hsueh-liang, 20, 47, 132 Chang Jin-ming, 219–220, 224–225, 249, 251, 308, 312, 383, 439, 448, 462, 478, 585 aunt of, see Chang Jun-ying brothers of, see Chang Xiao-fang; Chang Xiao-hei Chang Jung’s trips with, 478, 502–517, 615–617 childhood of, 225, 234–236, 241–242, 249, 251 entrepreneurial spirit of, 462–465, 480, 508, 536, 595 father and, (see also Chang Shouyu). 559, 564–565, 577 grandmother of, see Yang Yu-fang Iron Wrought Brotherhood of,
Xiao-hong denunciation and abuse of, 406, 410–411, 415, 450–455 detentions and parole of, 227–243, 245, 247, 322, 345, 453–457, 460–461, 473, 476, 478, 480–481, 517–518, 521 father and step-father of, see Xue Zhi-heng, General, and Xia, Dr husband and, 128–160, 174–181, 185, 189–193, 202–209, 227–229, 236, 251, 264, 276, 307, 368–377, 388, 401, 416–417, 427–438, 480–481, 610–614, 643 ill-health of, 107–109, 411, 439, 452–453, 548–549, 561, 574 jobs held by, 147, 152, 181, 198–199, 202,
join the Communists. 5 ‘Daughter for Sale for 10 Kilos of Rice’ In Battle for a New China 1947–1948 Yu-wu had first appeared at the house some months earlier bearing an introduction from a mutual friend. The Xias had just moved from their borrowed residence into a big house inside the walls near the north gate, and had been looking for a rich tenant to help with the rent. Yu-wu arrived wearing the uniform of a Kuomintang officer, accompanied by a woman whom he presented as his wife and