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) 318 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
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
Four stars means "liked it a lot" and yet I abandoned this book halfway through. How do those two thing fit together?
In the age of Facebook (or F******k, as I like to call it), the word "like" has come to mean something more vague and nebulous than it once did. I felt that this was an important book and I learned a great deal just getting about halfway through it. It was, however, unpleasant reading because of the sheer brutality and often needless suffering of the lives under discussion. I show more had escaped to this book from Mo Yan's Frog because the flippancy with which he handled some of the same themes. I needed less distance. But then I ended up needing more.
A character in The Three Body Problem [spoiler alert] faced with the Cultural Revolution decides that an alien race couldn't do a worse job than humans have done with life on Earth and reading Mao: The Unknown Story made me agree. I had to give it up so I could stop feeling that way and so I could sleep through the night uninterrupted by memories of torture stories which were everyday events in the history of the CCP.
Other reviewers criticized Ms Chang for allowing her hate of Mao to distort her objectivity but I am inclined to see things her way. Having read Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China I remember how she continued to believe in the cult of Mao even with so much evidence to the contrary. Would you criticize a book on Hitler(pace Mike Godwin) that failed to remain neutral on the subject of his moral worth? Perhaps the second half of the book is more "distorted" than the part I read.
Other critics complained that she didn't do enough to "explain" what made Mao the way he was. My opinion is that kind of deterministic reductionism is of little value. It is just an attempt to believe one has some kind of handle on what makes a man become a monster because it is too scary to believe otherwise. Yes, there is a correlation between those who were mistreated and those who end up mistreating others, but not everyone so abused becomes an abuser. Can one become an abuser without having undergone such treatment oneself? Some take that one cannot on faith and I am inclined to agree with them (but with the same depth of belief that goes into clicking "like"). Others think bad brain chemicals explain everything.
In addition to how horrible humans can be to each other, I also learned how important Stalin and the support of Russia was to Mao's rise to power, how ideology which superficially is the difference between Capitalism and Communism is more of a marketing strategy than an actual belief with the force of ambition being the actual impetus to events, that Chaing Kai Shek and Sun Yat Sen were also in bed with the Russians, that when the (Communist) doctrine of equality of the sexes meets culture, the doctrine is abandoned (except, maybe, for lip service), and how the wish of the young to discredit the ways of the old seems to happen over and over again. show less
In the age of Facebook (or F******k, as I like to call it), the word "like" has come to mean something more vague and nebulous than it once did. I felt that this was an important book and I learned a great deal just getting about halfway through it. It was, however, unpleasant reading because of the sheer brutality and often needless suffering of the lives under discussion. I show more had escaped to this book from Mo Yan's Frog because the flippancy with which he handled some of the same themes. I needed less distance. But then I ended up needing more.
A character in The Three Body Problem [spoiler alert] faced with the Cultural Revolution decides that an alien race couldn't do a worse job than humans have done with life on Earth and reading Mao: The Unknown Story made me agree. I had to give it up so I could stop feeling that way and so I could sleep through the night uninterrupted by memories of torture stories which were everyday events in the history of the CCP.
Other reviewers criticized Ms Chang for allowing her hate of Mao to distort her objectivity but I am inclined to see things her way. Having read Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China I remember how she continued to believe in the cult of Mao even with so much evidence to the contrary. Would you criticize a book on Hitler(pace Mike Godwin) that failed to remain neutral on the subject of his moral worth? Perhaps the second half of the book is more "distorted" than the part I read.
Other critics complained that she didn't do enough to "explain" what made Mao the way he was. My opinion is that kind of deterministic reductionism is of little value. It is just an attempt to believe one has some kind of handle on what makes a man become a monster because it is too scary to believe otherwise. Yes, there is a correlation between those who were mistreated and those who end up mistreating others, but not everyone so abused becomes an abuser. Can one become an abuser without having undergone such treatment oneself? Some take that one cannot on faith and I am inclined to agree with them (but with the same depth of belief that goes into clicking "like"). Others think bad brain chemicals explain everything.
In addition to how horrible humans can be to each other, I also learned how important Stalin and the support of Russia was to Mao's rise to power, how ideology which superficially is the difference between Capitalism and Communism is more of a marketing strategy than an actual belief with the force of ambition being the actual impetus to events, that Chaing Kai Shek and Sun Yat Sen were also in bed with the Russians, that when the (Communist) doctrine of equality of the sexes meets culture, the doctrine is abandoned (except, maybe, for lip service), and how the wish of the young to discredit the ways of the old seems to happen over and over again. show less
A grueling, heartbreaking, horrifying read, though not without hope or moments of relief. The story of the lives of three women in 20th century China. The first is daughter to a warlord and made into a concubine. In an astonishing act, this woman who has been oppressed, repressed, isolated, miseducated and who had her feet bound in a brutal and ugly tradition, flees with her daughter and this pretty much sets the tone of the human spirit surviving through appalling adversity. Through the show more fall of Kuomintang and the rise of Communism, the family survives and even thrives. The daughter becomes a Communist official and marries another, but the insane reign of Mao Tse Tung that will cost millions their lives through arrant, horrifying stupidity and evil is just beginning. as a portrait of a family in the time of Mao Wild Swans is riveting, if at times difficult reading. A whole nation dragged back to ignorance and fear by one man's monstrous ego - all too common in the history of the 20th century, but rarely in such an effective fashion, where there was no secret police -the people were made to police themselves. Utterly chilling, but brilliantly written. It's the sheer epic scale of the waste that makes the blood boil, though. show less
This is an epic personal story of life in China over much of the 20th century, told through the stories of three generations of women in one family. The author has lived in Britain since becoming one of the first Chinese students to get a doctorate at a British university since before the communist takeover in 1949. Her grandmother's family came from Manchuria in the extreme north of China, and at the age of 15 in 1924 she was given away as a concubine to one of the warlords vying for show more control in this part of China in the vacuum created by the overthrow of the last Chinese emperor in 1912. Her mother, the daughter of this union, was one of the early idealistic communists in the years leading up to the 1949 revolution and for the first few heady years of the new regime when there seemed to be a genuine attempt to create a better society and reduce the oppressive and miserable life of the majority of the population, especially in rural areas. The book covers in depth the dramatic and horrific events that followed: the initially promising but quickly aborted attempt at liberalisation that was the Hundred Flowers campaign; the "Great Leap Forward", where much of the country was forced to produce steel to boost industry, to such an extent that agriculture collapsed and famine ensued, in which some 30 million people died, including the author's uncle and great-aunt; then, after a brief period of reform, the appalling "Cultural Revolution", Mao's attempt to create a personal rule, overthrowing much of his own communist apparatus, which dislocated society and economy, destroying much of the country's cultural and historical infrastructure, effectively abolishing education, burning nearly all books, banning films, theatre and sport, seriously blighting the author's teenage years and adult adulthood; and which, despite some relaxation after 1972, didn't fully end until after Mao's death and the overthrow of the Gang of Four, led by his wife, in autumn 1976.
Despite this litany of catastrophe, there is hope in the love and closeness of the family, centred here around the three eponymous amazing and strong-minded women. After the death of her warlord "husband", who treated her fairly decently by the standards of the time, the grandmother found happiness married to a much older man; the mother found love with a fellow communist and, despite strains caused by her husband's principled but rigid puritanism, their marriage survived their vicious denunciations by Red Guards and others at the appalling mass meetings, and their imprisonment in labour camps until the early 1970s. The physical and mental strains of years of humiliation and subjection to forced labour and psychological pressures, killed the author's father at the age of only 54 in 1975. In the relatively more relaxed atmosphere of the later 1970s, especially after the restoration to power of Deng Xiaoping, the future paramount leader in the 80s and 90s, the author was able to study abroad and the lives of her mother and other family members, as well as that of hundreds of millions of other Chinese, improved dramatically, albeit within the framework of what remains of course a one party communist state. The afterword recounts in brief the author's life in Britain and the original publication of this book in 1991 (what I have read is the 25th anniversary edition). One thing I would like to have heard a bit more about, though, was how she was able to defect to Britain after gaining her doctorate in 1982. This is a magnificent and absorbing book, with much to say about human nature at its best and worse, and the horrors that blind adherence to an ideology can bring about. 5/5 show less
Despite this litany of catastrophe, there is hope in the love and closeness of the family, centred here around the three eponymous amazing and strong-minded women. After the death of her warlord "husband", who treated her fairly decently by the standards of the time, the grandmother found happiness married to a much older man; the mother found love with a fellow communist and, despite strains caused by her husband's principled but rigid puritanism, their marriage survived their vicious denunciations by Red Guards and others at the appalling mass meetings, and their imprisonment in labour camps until the early 1970s. The physical and mental strains of years of humiliation and subjection to forced labour and psychological pressures, killed the author's father at the age of only 54 in 1975. In the relatively more relaxed atmosphere of the later 1970s, especially after the restoration to power of Deng Xiaoping, the future paramount leader in the 80s and 90s, the author was able to study abroad and the lives of her mother and other family members, as well as that of hundreds of millions of other Chinese, improved dramatically, albeit within the framework of what remains of course a one party communist state. The afterword recounts in brief the author's life in Britain and the original publication of this book in 1991 (what I have read is the 25th anniversary edition). One thing I would like to have heard a bit more about, though, was how she was able to defect to Britain after gaining her doctorate in 1982. This is a magnificent and absorbing book, with much to say about human nature at its best and worse, and the horrors that blind adherence to an ideology can bring about. 5/5 show less
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Asia (1)
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Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 18
- Also by
- 1
- Members
- 13,966
- Popularity
- #1,647
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 287
- ISBNs
- 310
- Languages
- 25
- Favorited
- 10
