Hello everyone,
Happy 2020! I want to start this year with a book I finished a few weeks ago. I listened to the audiobook and really enjoyed it. At the beginning, I struggled to remember all the characters’ names, but then I got the hang of it.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
mariana
Why did I read this book?
My brother moved to China over a year ago. Since then, we’ve had a lot of interesting conversations about China, and our chats always leave me with more questions than answers. A couple of people recommended reading Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (originally published in 1991), to understand more about China’s past. Even though this book is relatively old, it really provided me with a great picture of China during the last century.
What is the book about?
A portrait of China through three generations: Through the autobiography of her family, Jung Chang describes a detailed image of what it looked like to live in China a hundred years ago. She beautifully narrates the story of her grandmother (a warlord’s concubine with bound feet), and her mother (a passionate Communist), as well as her own life experiences (as a peasant, a doctor, a steelworker, and an electrician ultimately becoming a famous writer living in Britain).
A portrait of 20th century China: Chang’s detailed chronicle (starting in 1909) gives us a clear picture of what it looked like and felt like to live in China a century ago. Her writing style and the memories shared are truly illustrative of how her family and many others lived back in the day.
A peek into communist life: What does a communist country look like? How is it different from a capitalist country? How do people live? Do people like it? These are some of the questions that you’ll be able to answer through the pages of Chang’s book.
“The virtual absence of any chance of a better future and the near total immobility for anyone born a peasant took the incentive out of the pursuit of knowledge. Children of school age would stay at home to help their families with their work or look after younger brothers and sisters. They would be out in the fields when they were barely in their teens. As for girls, the peasants considered it a complete waste of time for them to go to school.”
― Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
Why should you read it?
It’s a fascinating read: An eye-opening text describing unbelievable chapters of China’s story. This book made me empathise with China’s past, forever changing my perception of its culture.
Understand more about China: China is a big conversation topic these days. While I still don’t have a comprehensive understanding of it, this book opened my eyes and gave me a better picture of what it looked like during a key period in its history. I now understand a lot more about topics like The Kuomintang, The Communist Party, The Cultural Revolution, the Great Chinese Famine, and how all these shaped China’s history.
Insight into a personality cult: This book describes in great detail the power of Mao Zedong over his people. It’s incredibly interesting to see how his personality cult was built over time, and equally terrifying to think about how some current world leaders resemble him.
“The other hallmark of Maoism, it seemed to me, was the reign of ignorance. Because of his calculation that the cultured class were an easy target for a population that was largely illiterate, because of his own deep resentment of formal education and the educated, because of his megalomania, which led to his scorn for the great figures of Chinese culture, and because of his contempt for the areas of Chinese civilization that he did not understand, such as architecture, art, and music, Mao destroyed much of the country's cultural heritage. He left behind not only a brutalized nation, but also an ugly land with little of its past glory remaining or appreciated.”
― Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
Links to buy the book
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Paperback ($11.69 USD)
Amazon MX
Pasta blanda ($222.35 MXN)
//As an Amazon Associate, I earn a commission from qualifying purchases via the above links.//
Favourite quotes
//The purpose of this section is to share some of my favourite book bits, so you can come back to them when you finish a book if you wish to do so. I’ve put in bold my favourite ones, in case you want to read a few (or all) ahead of the book.//
“...boredom was as exhausting as backbreaking labor.”
“As a child, my idea of the West was that it was a miasma of poverty and misery, like that of the homeless 'Little Match Girl' in the Hans Christian Andersen story. When I was in the boarding nursery and did not want to finish my food, the teacher would say: “Think of all the starving children in the capitalist world!”
“When a man gets power, even his chickens and dogs rise to heaven.”
“I could understand ignorance, but I could not accept its glorification, still less its right to rule.”
"You pay fees and read for years, and in the end you are still a peasant, earning your food with your sweat. You don't get a grain of rice more for being able to read books. Why waste time and money?
“...as the revolution was made by human beings, it was burdened with their failings.”
“I was extremely curious about the alternatives to the kind of life I had been leading, and my friends and I exchanged rumours and scraps of information we dug from official publications. I was struck less by the West's technological developments and high living standards than by the absence of political witch hunts, the lack of consuming suspicion, the dignity of the individual, and the incredible amount of liberty. To me, the ultimate proof of freedom in the West was that there seemed to be so many people there attacking the West and praising China. Almost every other day the front page of Reference, the newspaper which carried foreign press items, would feature some eulogy of Mao and the Cultural Revolution. At first I was angered by these, but they soon made me see how tolerant another society could be. I realized that this was the kind of society I wanted to live in: where people were allowed to hold different, even outrageous views. I began to see that it was the very tolerance of oppositions, of protesters, that kept the West progressing.”
“Father is close, Mother is close, but neither is as close as Chairman Mao.”
“The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. But I wondered how many of their tears were genuine. People had practiced acting to such a degree that they confused it with their true feelings. Weeping for Mao was perhaps just another programmed act in their programmed lives.”
“She was a pious Buddhist and every day in her prayers asked Buddha not to reincarnate her as a woman. "Let me become a cat or a dog, but not a woman," was her constant murmur as she shuffled around the house, oozing apology with every step.”
“According to tradition, my great-grandfather married early, at 14, with a woman six years older. It was considered to be one of the duties of the wife to raise her husband.”
“Many writers and artists committed suicide after being cruelly beaten and humiliated, and being forced to witness their work being burned to ashes.”