Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China [Paperback]

The section of the book that concerns Jung Chang's grandmother is probably the most interesting and accessible of the tales of the three women. Here, the author does a good job highlighting the social and cultural mores of the time and breathes a bit of individual life into the people whose history she's telling us about. However, it doesn't last.

I found much of the writing about her mother and about Chang herself felt like it had been written at a remove from the subject matter. Chang simply uses short, declarative statements such as "My mother was angry at my father again", "I was sad", "I was afraid", "My brother was worried", et cetera, instead of attempting to help illustrate an emotional state or mindset of someone for the reader. Yes, the short sentences get the point across, but they remove all the indivuality from Chang and her family. These people have no individual voice and are interchangeable. For example, when Chang writes that her mother yells at her father, I don't hear her mother at all. I just read the words because that's all they are: words. It's as if Chang was focusing on the language instead of the people. Plus, her insistence on recounting the minutiae of everyone's life/day (especially her own) covers up those moments in a deluge of detail.

There were a few spots where I thought the author came across with some passion (such as when she gave examples of how people pushed aside their own ideas of right and wrong or good and bad to conform to the Communist ideology) but, overall, she was too intent on reporting every last thing that happened and the passionless nature of her narrative took away any connection or emotion I might have felt at reading her story.

1. The reason that the Kuomintang was not successful in China was constant corruption. Some people have suggested that Chinese people love tyrants (Jasper Becker, "The Chinese") and this is the explanation of why they rejected what would have been a democratic government for an authoritarian government. This is partially true, but the Kuomintang blew any chance that it had at legitimacy with its rampant corruption.

2. That the Communist Party became popular because they promised to not be like the corrupt and crooked Kuomintang. Her father is an example of one of the wide-eyed idealists that really believed in his cause at the beginning and was left a broken man when he saw what actually became of this grand vision. People at Western universities are always attacking the West and praising the Communist ideology/ governent allocation of resources, and they haven't a faintest idea of the actual RESULTS of the intended programs. Nor do they understand the incentive structures that led to those results.

3. Historical accounts of the great famine. I can't believe that this very afternoon, there are still people trying to talk away this historical event in China and say that it was just a statistical illusion. This is the second author that I've read that gives historical accounts of people eating their children.

4. Demonstrating how the cult of Mao was created and maintained, as well as what were his motives in the various campaigns (Cultural Revolution/ The Great Leap Forward) that swept the country during his reign. Another author (Anhua Gao) has also noted that Mao generated a lot of morass in the country because the weaker the country, the easier it was to control. But her detail is not comparable to the author of this book. She showed the self-denunciation meetings and the stages of his campaigns to keep the country divided and fighting against itself. It may be another 200 years before China shakes off the residual results of his rule (such as overpopulation and then the resulting sex imbalance that has come about because of population control), but here in this is an example of WHAT happened, and HOW it happened.

5. Showing the highly ritualized behavior of Chinese people in things such as foot binding, etc. A lot of people may come to China and wonder where people here get their ideas from and why they are prisoner of them. This author demonstrates that it's been that way for a *long* time. And it may never change.

It's hard to recommend this book enough times for someone who wants *actual results* of what happens in the context of a Communist Revolution, as opposed to the vague ramblings of something like the Communist Manifesto or state-sheltered academics in Western universities.

Wild Swans is supposed to be a story of "Three Daughters of China"; however it is far from it. First off the book is a lengthy 508 pages and is split unevenly among the three generations of women. After the first hundred pages, the communist section begins. Chang makes it obvious that she despises communism. When Mao Zedong dies Chang states "The news filled me with such euphoria that for an instant I was numb." Undoubtedly communism was a major part of life for all Chinese; however after page 100, every single anecdote dealt with communism. Chang must have had other stories to tell but she does not tell them. The stories are all negative and they grow increasingly shocking and critical of communism as the book progresses. In chapter 7, Jung Chang's mother, in order prove herself to be a devoted communist, is forced to forage for food even though she is pregnant. In chapter 20, Chang's father is arrested by communist authorities after speaking his mind. In chapter 22, the whole family is split apart and sent to the countryside for "re-education".

Wild Swans is really an open attack on communism. It is fine for Jung Chang to write such a book. I would recommend it "whole-heartedly" if you are interested in reading a book containing bits and pieces of the communist life in China. However, if you are looking for a more comprehensive history, do not expect much from Wild Swans.