Jung Chang
Author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
About the Author
Jung Chang was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China, in 1952. She left China for Britain in 1978 and obtained a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of York in 1982. She is the first person from the People¿s Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British university. She lives in show more London with her husband, Jon Halliday, with whom she wrote Mao: The Unknown Story. Her non-fiction book, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, was a New York Times bestseller in 2014. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Works by Jung Chang
Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China (2019) 316 copies, 10 reviews
2006 1 copy
Mao: La historia desconocida 1 copy
Cixí,la emperatriz 1 copy
Associated Works
Flirten met het leven : droomreizen van Karen Blixen, Jung Chang, Rosetta Loy, Carolijn Visser en vele anderen (1996) — Contributor — 8 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Jung Chang
- Legal name
- Chang, Erhong
- Other names
- 張戎
- Birthdate
- 1952-03-25
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Sichuan University
University of York (PhD|Linguistics) - Occupations
- barefoot doctor
steelworker
electrician
lecturer - Awards and honors
- Commander of the Order of the British Empire
- Relationships
- Halliday, Jon (spouse)
- Short biography
- [excerpted from author's website]
Jung Chang was born in Sichuan Province, China, in 1952. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) she worked as a peasant, a “barefoot” doctor, a steelworker, and an electrician before becoming an English-language student at Sichuan University. She left China for Britain in 1978 and obtained a PhD in Linguistics in 1982 at the University of York – the first person from Communist China to receive a doctorate from a British university.
Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages. She has won many awards, including the UK Writers' Guild Best Non-Fiction and Book of the Year UK, and has received honorary doctorates from a number of universities in the UK and USA (Buckingham, York, Warwick, Dundee, the Open University, University of West London, and Bowdoin College). She is an Honorary Fellow of SOAS University of London.
All her books are banned in China. - Nationality
- China
UK - Birthplace
- Yibin, Sichuan Province, China
- Places of residence
- China
London, Middlesex, England, UK - Associated Place (for map)
- China
Members
Discussions
December 2025: Jung Chang in Monthly Author Reads (January 14)
Wild Swans Group Read in 2014 Category Challenge (June 2014)
Mao in Non-Fiction Readers (January 2008)
Reviews
Communism is supposed to get rid of social classes and inequality. The book starts with China ruled by warlords. Strapped for cash, the author's great grandfather sells his daughter, the author's grandmother to one of them as a concubine. These were the kind of abuses that communism was designed to end but ended up perpetuating while still giving lip service to the ideals.
Just because I gave it 5 stars it doesn't mean I don't have to also add what people today are calling a trigger warning. show more You have to be able to tolerate reading about a lot of people suffering for a long time; unnecessary suffering primarily caused by the cruelty of other human beings.
It's a long book, covering events taking place through 3 generations and China has a large population. That makes for a great deal of suffering.
I somehow made it through most of my life knowing next to nothing about China. There is a long list of countries I know nothing about and that probably makes me a typical American. Also, typically, I didn't miss this knowledge. I, rather than a repressive leader, stood in the way of this knowledge.
It's easy to point out the failings of America, especially under a Trump presidency, but reading this book makes the failings of the current political situation here seem almost trivial in comparison. Trump has a personality like Mao. A need to be worshiped, an imperiousness while claiming values he doesn't actually hold, an anti-intellectualism, a talent for bringing out the worst in others. He stirs up the "peasants" but makes their life worse, yet they don't seem to notice. He's not really interested in the fate of the country--only his own. However he lacks Mao's power. The American government isn't a dictatorship yet.
As the Chinese people are forced to make hard choices in impossible situations, Jung Chang's insight is that which side someone is on, or to which category they are said to belong is a poor guide to evaluating them. Instead look for who is compassionate and who is not. show less
Just because I gave it 5 stars it doesn't mean I don't have to also add what people today are calling a trigger warning. show more You have to be able to tolerate reading about a lot of people suffering for a long time; unnecessary suffering primarily caused by the cruelty of other human beings.
It's a long book, covering events taking place through 3 generations and China has a large population. That makes for a great deal of suffering.
I somehow made it through most of my life knowing next to nothing about China. There is a long list of countries I know nothing about and that probably makes me a typical American. Also, typically, I didn't miss this knowledge. I, rather than a repressive leader, stood in the way of this knowledge.
It's easy to point out the failings of America, especially under a Trump presidency, but reading this book makes the failings of the current political situation here seem almost trivial in comparison. Trump has a personality like Mao. A need to be worshiped, an imperiousness while claiming values he doesn't actually hold, an anti-intellectualism, a talent for bringing out the worst in others. He stirs up the "peasants" but makes their life worse, yet they don't seem to notice. He's not really interested in the fate of the country--only his own. However he lacks Mao's power. The American government isn't a dictatorship yet.
As the Chinese people are forced to make hard choices in impossible situations, Jung Chang's insight is that which side someone is on, or to which category they are said to belong is a poor guide to evaluating them. Instead look for who is compassionate and who is not. show less
Stunning autobiography / biography / and accessible history of twentieth-century China.
I knew next-to-nothing about life in China, & this was a marvellous, personal history, as Jung relates the moving stories of her concubine grandmother, communist mother, and herself as a follower of Mao.
The various tyrannies and brain-washings so shocking, tragic & unfair. Where politics are given more importance than the well-being of the populace. Has made me grateful that I was born in a country where show more free speech & thought - so far, is permissible. This book is so thought-provoking, I would encourage everyone to read it, especially those who support cancel-culture; to demonstrate what happens when blinkered, dogmatic self-righteousness becomes ascendant. show less
I knew next-to-nothing about life in China, & this was a marvellous, personal history, as Jung relates the moving stories of her concubine grandmother, communist mother, and herself as a follower of Mao.
The various tyrannies and brain-washings so shocking, tragic & unfair. Where politics are given more importance than the well-being of the populace. Has made me grateful that I was born in a country where show more free speech & thought - so far, is permissible. This book is so thought-provoking, I would encourage everyone to read it, especially those who support cancel-culture; to demonstrate what happens when blinkered, dogmatic self-righteousness becomes ascendant. show less
This is a thicc-ass book, at between 800 to 1000 pages, depending on which printed version you get, and damn, there's a LOT of juicy shit here.
This is my third biography by this author - 4th if you also include her bio/autobiography Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China The first two bios I read were of the Soong sisters Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China and of Empress Dowager Cixi Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern show more China
In her bios of the Soong sisters and Cixi, Jung is more flattering/sympathetic to them. Which does make some sense, as these women were frequently demonized/belittled/portrayed unflatteringly by others simply for being women in power. Here in Mao's biography, Chang does the opposite - which also makes sense given Mao's cult of personality and the propaganda machine that practically deified him despite all the suffering that he was responsible for, directly or indirectly.
In here, Chang portrays Mao as all too human - and all too selfish and greedy. It certainly was interesting to read about Mao's early days and how he treated his wives and his soldiers and subjects, and how as he amassed more and more power he got more selfish and worse. He didn't truly care about the people but he could act like he did when it suited him.
Some people have an issue with the bias in this book against him and I understand why - but at the same time I also enjoyed this book and learning all this juicy shit about Chairman Mao and why he should NOT have been deified/lionized as he was in China. It makes me think of Hitler/the Nazi Party, the Kims of North Korea, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Pol Pot in Cambodia, and so on, and how these awful people could present a pleasing image when it suited them while at the same time being responsible for the deaths of countless people.
4/5 stars for a juicy but entertaining and hella informative read. show less
This is my third biography by this author - 4th if you also include her bio/autobiography Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China The first two bios I read were of the Soong sisters Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China and of Empress Dowager Cixi Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern show more China
In her bios of the Soong sisters and Cixi, Jung is more flattering/sympathetic to them. Which does make some sense, as these women were frequently demonized/belittled/portrayed unflatteringly by others simply for being women in power. Here in Mao's biography, Chang does the opposite - which also makes sense given Mao's cult of personality and the propaganda machine that practically deified him despite all the suffering that he was responsible for, directly or indirectly.
In here, Chang portrays Mao as all too human - and all too selfish and greedy. It certainly was interesting to read about Mao's early days and how he treated his wives and his soldiers and subjects, and how as he amassed more and more power he got more selfish and worse. He didn't truly care about the people but he could act like he did when it suited him.
Some people have an issue with the bias in this book against him and I understand why - but at the same time I also enjoyed this book and learning all this juicy shit about Chairman Mao and why he should NOT have been deified/lionized as he was in China. It makes me think of Hitler/the Nazi Party, the Kims of North Korea, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Pol Pot in Cambodia, and so on, and how these awful people could present a pleasing image when it suited them while at the same time being responsible for the deaths of countless people.
4/5 stars for a juicy but entertaining and hella informative read. show less
This is a fascinating history of 20th century China through the lives of three women, Jung Chang, her mother, and her grandmother. Of course it only tells their perspectives, but all are glimpses of China I have never seen so clearly. If I had picked up a history book of this era, I would have probably put it down, too frustrated by the Communist regime to continue. Through this narration, I cared about what happened to Jung Chang's family and the country and couldn't put it down (I listened show more to the audible version and read when sitting down.).
Briefly, Chang's grandmother, sold as a concubine, lives through the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the Kuomintang, Mao's takeover of Manchuria, and follows the lives of her daughter and grandchildren. Her mother is raised on Mao's schools and propaganda and rises through the ranks of the Communist system with her husband, later to be renounced in the Cultural Revolution. Chang and her siblings struggle to learn and thrive during the Cultural Revolution, always challenging.
Jung Chang's writing is very straightforward (as is the narration), which is absolutely appropriate for this epic story already so full of extreme events and emotions. Lyricism is not needed and extra description would have made this book too long. Despite the length of this book (562 pages), there was never a sense of it being slow or too long. The narration by Joy Osmanski also generally moved swiftly and clearly (at 1.25 speed). show less
Briefly, Chang's grandmother, sold as a concubine, lives through the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the Kuomintang, Mao's takeover of Manchuria, and follows the lives of her daughter and grandchildren. Her mother is raised on Mao's schools and propaganda and rises through the ranks of the Communist system with her husband, later to be renounced in the Cultural Revolution. Chang and her siblings struggle to learn and thrive during the Cultural Revolution, always challenging.
Jung Chang's writing is very straightforward (as is the narration), which is absolutely appropriate for this epic story already so full of extreme events and emotions. Lyricism is not needed and extra description would have made this book too long. Despite the length of this book (562 pages), there was never a sense of it being slow or too long. The narration by Joy Osmanski also generally moved swiftly and clearly (at 1.25 speed). show less
Lists
History: Asia (1)
Women's Stories (1)
World History (1)
Asia (1)
Unread books (1)
Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 19
- Also by
- 1
- Members
- 14,014
- Popularity
- #1,641
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 287
- ISBNs
- 310
- Languages
- 25
- Favorited
- 10
