by Jung Chang
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| List Price: | $16.00 |
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| Lowest New Price: | $9.73 |
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Product Description
"This is a powerful, moving, at times shocking account of three generations of Chinese women, as compelling as Amy Tan." --Mary Morris.
"An evocative, often astonishing view of life in a changing China." -- The New York Times
Amazon.com Review
In Wild Swans Jung Chang recounts the evocative, unsettling, and insistently gripping story of how three generations of women in her family fared in the political maelstrom of China during the 20th century. Chang's grandmother was a warlord's concubine. Her gently raised mother struggled with hardships in the early days of Mao's revolution and rose, like her husband, to a prominent position in the Communist Party before being denounced during the Cultural Revolution. Chang herself marched, worked, and breathed for Mao until doubt crept in over the excesses of his policies and purges. Born just a few decades apart, their lives overlap with the end of the warlords' regime and overthrow of the Japanese occupation, violent struggles between the Kuomintang and the Communists to carve up China, and, most poignant for the author, the vicious cycle of purges orchestrated by Chairman Mao that discredited and crushed millions of people, including her parents.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Rather tedious, 2008-10-05
I found it interesting for the first half of the book but then it became redundant and tedious.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 eye-opening, couldn't put it down; everyone should read this book., 2008-09-15
Wild Swans is an amazing, eye-opening look at China's past and reveals much about why China is the country it is today. I spend about 6 weeks in China (in manufacturing) per year, yet never began to understand what some of the people I work with with have been thru until I read this book. People my parents age being tortured, being starved, seeing arbitrary violence and murder of their children, their families, entire villages. Compared to Mao, Hitler was a nice guy. So few people seem to know or care about the needless starvation, violence & sadistic political game-playing that was inflicted on China by it's own government resulting in deaths of millions of people. I couldn't put this book down. Jung interweaves her family's history with the history of the country in a matter of fact way, documenting China as I have never seen it before. This is a must read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent presentation, 2008-08-15
I've had this book on my shelf since published in 1991 and decided this week to read it. I am sorry I waited so long. Beautifully written and an invaluable insight into the Chinese mind. In my opinion it goes a very long way toward explaining the historical distrust between Chinese and Western peoples. Chinese people could not/were trained not to express their thoughts (and in many instances were encouraged to not even have thoughts) and this lack of ability to communicate directly is perceived as untrustworthy by Westerners. I did have to laugh when I read that Chinese told their children to be grateful for their food as children in the capitalist West were starving! (Being of an age where when I said "yuck" I was told children in China were starving and I should be glad I wasn't.) But many did starve and many more were starved of spirit and individual thought. An outstanding and extremely readable history of a period of relatively recent political events and the results therefrom. Alas, the philosophy and practices of Mao have permeated many other parts of the world.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
A must read non-fiction account of Cultural Revolution, 2008-08-13
This is the gripping story of three generations of women. It is not only an autobiography; it is the story of China's past. This book, told in story form, is a first- hand account of the many changes and horrors endured by the Chinese people. The Author's beautiful grandmother, whose feet were bound at age two, became a concubine to a famous general in the warlord government. Her parents were high officials in the People's Republic. But their positions did not prevent them from torment. The Cultural Revolution and other historical movements impacted every member of Jung Chang's family in life altering ways. They suffered intolerably. The author describes the life of her mother who raised her children without emotional support from her husband or from the Communist Party, to which both parents at the time belonged. Jung Chang is the third generation daughter of China in this personal story. The reader will learn about the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek, the Japanese invasion, the famines, land reforms, denunciations, Red Guards, Chairman Mao (who made such declarations as the burning of books and art, pulling out grass, destruction of temples, etc.) and Mme. Mao who made cruel commands of her own. There are lessons to be learned in reading about masses believing whatever their leaders tell them and following their dictates unquestioningly. It is frightening and compelling at the same time.
Although many of the author's accounts of atrocities perpetrated on the populace are difficult to comprehend and uncomfortable to read, it is a valuable book for those who want to know more about the history of a country where a fifth of humanity lives in our shrinking globe and now has one of the fastest growing economies; China currently holds a trillion dollars in U.S. securities. Reading Wild Swans is a good way to understand the Chinese culture in the 20th century and the generations who endured great hardships at the hands of those described in this book. It is uplifting to see the influence of Chang's parents in her decision making and read of her own acts of bravery and compassion. I won't divulge the ending, but Chang does find happiness.
It was inspiring to read about the personal integrity, ethical standards, courage and moral values in the face of incalculable brutality, degradation and mindless destruction of real people, not fictional characters. Jung Chang spared no detail in describing these virtues and vices in telling her story. If you want better insight and understanding of China, for a firsthand account -Read Wild Swans! This is a very significant book and I highly recommend it.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
memoire extraordinaire, 2008-08-08
Spanning three generations of Chinese women, this 508 page tour de force is breathtaking in its scope. Each of the characters in this book is fully developed. The reader learns about life in communist China. It is almost too much to bear reading about the severe hardships endured by these brave women. My only criticism, and a minor one at that, is that as the Cultural Revolution squeezed out all of the old, beautiful and the traditional from society, it also made it difficult, if not impossible, for the author to convey the truly raw emotion that must have been experienced by members of her family and their friends as they suffered through the years of Mao. Nevertheless, as China continues to evolve and play a larger role on the world stage, this book helps us to understand how far the Chinese have come.
Stephen Ira Tamber
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