Jung Chang
Jung Chang
Jung Changis a Chinese-born British writer now living in London, best known for her family autobiography Wild Swans, selling over 10 million copies worldwide but banned in the People's Republic of China...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionWriter
book sea two
I was not allowed to take notes but my friend and I memorised those two and a half pages. Most people talked to me because of the warning. They knew this book was not going to be the official line.
home past chinese
I like to have Chinese furniture in my home as a constant and painful reminder of how much has been destroyed in China. The contrast between the beauty of the past and the ugliness of the modern is nowhere sharper than in China.
spring taken army
In spring 1989...I saw the buildup of demonstrations from Chengdu to Tiananmen Square. It struck me that fear had been forgotten to such an extent that few of the millions of demonstrators perceived danger. Most seemed to be taken by surprise when the army opened fire.
writing swans research
While I was writing Wild Swans I thought the famine was the result of economic mismanagement but during the research I realised that it was something more sinister.
dog men heaven
When a man gets power, even his chickens and dogs rise to heaven.
grandmother age fifteen
At the age of fifteen my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord general.
children parent ruins
If children were brought up to become non-conformists it would only ruin their lives. So parents all over China who loved their children told them to do as Chairman Mao said. It was not possible to tell them anything else.
boredom labor exhausting
...boredom was as exhausting as backbreaking labor.
war chinese upheaval
What has marked Chinese society is its level of cruelty, not just revolutions and wars. We ought to reject it totally, otherwise in another upheaval there will be further cruelty.
wanted
I always wanted to be a writer.
children party parent
When I was in China, Mao was Chairman, and parents were terrified to tell their children anything that differed from the party line in case the children repeated it and endangered the whole family.