”Wild swans” is an incredible journey in the life of three chinese women: the author, her mother and her grandmother. Chang Jung describes China amazingly, starting from her grandmother’s youth, who had to overcome foot-binding and was forced to become the concubine of a general, that of her mother and father, officials and active members of the Comunist Party and then persecuted and sent to work in re-education camps, and finally describing her youth, lived under Mao regime. She herself will become a Red Guard and will live under the influence of the “cult of Mao”, until the end of the Cultural Revolution when her adoration towards the comunist leader starts to waver.
In 1978, two years after Mao’s death and the following opening-up of China under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, Chang Jung recieve a scholarship from her university to study English in England. Hence, the author’s secret dream to finally be able to see the mysterious world outside China, comes true.
“Wild swans” is her first book and its first edition dates back to 1991. The reason behind it is her mother, who inspired the writing process and went to see her in England in 1988. Being outside China and during a time in which expressing one’s thought was no more prohibited, led her mother to open up with Jung, who only then discovered things about her family she didn’t know.
Written extremely well, the book contains also pictures of her family that allow the reader to feel closer to the author and makes the reading even more engaging.
Translated into 37 languages, “Wild swans” reports better than any history book the end of the imperial era, the civil war between communist and Kuomitang, the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, the catastrophic Great Leap Forward and the folly of the Cultural Revolution. A book one must absolutely read in order to better understand chinese history during 1900s and the Chinese themselves.
