Jung Chang: Wild Swans

Three Daughters of China

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 1991

This 25th anniversary edition published 2016

Copyright © Globalflair 1991, 2003

Jung Chang asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007176151

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007379873

Version: 2018-05-14

‘Of all the personal histories to have emerged out of China’s twentieth-century nightmare, Wild Swans is the most deeply thoughtful and the most heart-rending I’ve read. It moves, in part, like a ghastly oriental fairytale, but the authority and the reticent passion with which Jung Chang speaks her memories—and those of others—is unmistakable.’

COLIN THUBRON, Spectator

‘ Wild Swans is a very unusual masterpiece. Everything about it is extraordinary. Not only has it been a popular bestseller, because it is impossible to put down; it has also received the most serious critical attention. The book arouses all the emotions, such as pity and terror, that great tragedy is supposed to evoke, and also a complex mixture of admiration, despair and delight at seeing a luminous intelligence directed at the heart of darkness.’

MINETTE MARRIN, Sunday Telegraph

‘Mesmerising. Like all great stories of survival, no matter what tragedies and horrors are encountered along the way, Wild Swans is ultimately an uplifting book: it is the courage and spirit of this family which will, I believe, be my abiding impression (even if memories of the horrors endured will take a long time to fade).’

ANTONIA FRASER, The Times

‘A quite exceptional book. Jung Chang is the classic storyteller, describing in measured tones the almost unbelievable.’

PENELOPE FITZGERALD, London Review of Books

‘ Wild Swans has stayed in my mind all year. Quite unforgettable.’

MICHAEL IGNATIEFF, Times Literary Supplement

‘An extraordinary story, popular history at its most compelling. Her readiness to record life’s small pleasures as well as its looming horrors is not only an index of Jung Chang’s honesty and good humour, it is a part of what makes Wild Swans so fascinating. To compare Wild Swans to sagas of the kind that fill the bestseller lists may seem to trivialise the real and deadly seriousness of its subject matter, but the book offers many of the pleasures of good historical fiction.’

LUCY HUGHES-HALLETT, Independent

‘Riveting, an extraordinary epic. A work of true, living history drawing deep on family memories, an unmatchable insight into the making of modern China and the impact of war and totalitarianism on the destinies of a quarter of the human race.’

RICHARD HELLER, Mail on Sunday

‘A huge tour de force.’

DEREK DAVIES, Financial Times

‘Immensely moving and unsettling; an unforgettable portrait of the brain-death of a nation.’

J. G. BALLARD

To my grandmother and my fatherwho did not live to see this book

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Family Tree

Chronology

Author’s Note

Map

1 ‘Three-Inch Golden Lilies’

2 ‘Even Plain Cold Water Is Sweet’

3 ‘They All Say What a Happy Place Manchukuo Is’

4 ‘Slaves Who Have No Country of Your Own’

5 ‘Daughter for Sale for 10 Kilos of Rice’

6 ‘Talking about Love’

7 ‘Going through the Five Mountain Passes’

8 ‘Returning Home Robed in Embroidered Silk’

Plates Section 1

9 ‘When a Man Gets Power, Even His Chickens and Dogs Rise to Heaven’

10 ‘Suffering Will Make You a Better Communist’

11 ‘After the Anti-Rightist Campaign No One Opens Their Mouth’

12 ‘Capable Women Can Make a Meal without Food’

13 ‘Thousand-Gold Little Precious’

14 ‘Father Is Close, Mother Is Close, but Neither Is as Close as Chairman Mao’

15 ‘Destroy First, and Construction Will Look After Itself’

16 ‘Soar to Heaven, and Pierce the Earth’

17 ‘Do You Want Our Children to Become “Blacks”?’

18 ‘More Than Gigantic Wonderful News’

19 ‘Where There Is a Will to Condemn, There Is Evidence’

20 ‘I Will Not Sell My Soul’

Plates Section 2

21 ‘Giving Charcoal in Snow’

22 ‘Thought Reform through Labour’

23 ‘The More Books You Read, the More Stupid You Become’

24 ‘Please Accept My Apologies That Come a Lifetime Too Late’

25 ‘The Fragrance of Sweet Wind’

26 ‘Sniffing after Foreigners’ Farts and Calling Them Sweet’

27 ‘If This Is Paradise, What Then Is Hell?’

28 ‘Fighting to Take Wing’

Epilogue

Afterword

Index

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Publisher

My name ‘Jung’ is pronounced ‘Yung.’

The names of members of my family and public figures are real, and are spelled in the way by which they are usually known. Other personal names are disguised.

Two difficult phonetic symbols: X and Q are pronounced, respectively, as sh and ch .

In order to describe their functions accurately, I have translated the names of some Chinese organizations differently from the Chinese official versions. I use ‘the Department of Public Affairs’ rather than ‘the Department of Propaganda’ for xuan-chuan-bu , and ‘the Cultural Revolution Authority’ rather than ‘the Cultural Revolution Group’ for zhong-yang-wen-ge .