For anyone studying Chinese culture or interested in China, this book is essential reading!

I read this at the behest of my mother who had loved it. I too found it incredible.

Several years later I was training to be a teacher of English as a second language in London and was told to prepare a lesson with the theme of biographies. At the time I was staying with a friend and seeing Wild Swans on her bookshelf decided to take it along the next day to use as a prop in my class.

At the end of the class one of the chinese students came up to me and asked if I’d enjoyed it. When I replied that I’d loved it she broke into a smile and said, “It is about my family”. I was amazed to find that I had Jung Chang’s sister in my class! She got me to look at the photos and there she was as a child but still recognizable.

I’m in China right now, and I’ve always known that China has had a rough history. I’ve taken a class. I’ve seen the numbers.

But this class really brought home the feelings from that time. I don’t take it to be a true history, but it does show how one life – the author’s – was effected by the upheavals in China in the twentieth century. I can’t say that the facts are correct, but what is important in this book is the emotion that really comes through – emotion that is too often absent when we think about countries on the other side of the world.

The book also hit a chord with me about the legendary Chinese pragmatism. It is said that the most important thing is to live, but that often seems to put one’s life over another’s, which is a calculation easy to make pragmatically; at the very worst, I’ll be able to make up for it later. But after reading this book and seeing how terribly bad that pragmatism can go… I’m not sure I aspire to mastering that Chinese ability to 吃苦.

Boy, this was a tough one. If not for my inability to memorize chinese names which makes it difficult to finding my way through Chang Jung’s extended family history, then for the physical suffering and loss of freedom of thought for the whole Chang family. The feeling of relief at the end of the book but also the sadnesse it leaves you with make “Wild Swans” an essential read for unknowing westerners like me.

This is an unbelieveable read. I keep refering to the photos to make sure it actually happened. Fantastic book!

Although it’s fairly sensationalized (Jung Chang was writing for a Western audience, rather than her fellow countrymen, and it clearly shows) it is an intriguing and gripping story of a fairly priveleged Chinese family (although they didn’t start out that way) and their life through the Cultural Revolution.

For a taste of real Chinese Cultural Revolution memoirs, though, that weren’t written for fame or gain, check out The Red Mirror by Chihua Wen or Six Chapters from my Life Downunder by Yung Chiang. They’re a lot darker, but a lot truer, and tell the stories of average people with very little political or financial standing in China. (For example, Jung Chang really bothered me when she bemoaned the loss of one of her two wetnurses… whereas the people in the other books I’ve mentioned never had such a luxury.)

A truly gripping memoir/biography of the lives of three generations of Chinese women, from the time of the warlords and the Kuomintang to Maoist rule. If there’s one primary thread running through this fairly hefty book (the timelines and maps add to the bulk but are invaluable), it’s the eternal recurrence of man’s brutal inhumanity to man, and the abuse of the disenfranchised many by the privileged few, no matter which political ideology they’ve used to cloak their will to power. As with Hitler and Stalin, the cult of personality cultivated by Mao and his sycophantic cronies beggars belief. Harrowing in places, and generally depressing, Wild Swans is nevertheless a real eye-opener and says as much about mankind as it does about China.

The other day while I was looking for some reading materials at our mini-library, this book caught my eyes! Looks intriguing so I immediately borrowed it and now, planning to have a go while on a 5-hour ordeal at Xiamen airport on Tuesday. A highly recommended book? Let’s see. :-))

I’m in the middle of this right now. This book is amazing (I can’t put it down!) and gives a real insight into communist China.