Wild Swans

Wild Swans, personal and family memoir by Chinese-born British author Jung Chang. Published in 1991, it was widely praised and is her best-known work.

In Wild Swans, Chang recounts the lives of three generations of women in her family during the political storms of China in the 20th century, from 1909 to 1978. The memoir begins with the birth of her grandmother, Yu Fang, near the end of the Qing dynasty. The process of footbinding, done according to ancient Chinese custom, began when she was only two years old. Her father arranged for her to become the concubine of a wealthy and powerful warlord general. Though she lived in luxury, Yu Fang was lonely and fearful, and it was six years before she saw the general for a brief visit, during which time she became pregnant. The general named their daughter Bao Qin. When the general was dying, Yu Fang fled back to her parents’ home to prevent Bao Qin from being under the control of the general’s wife, but, fortunately and unexpectedly, the general freed Yu Fang. Later, Yu Fang married a much older doctor, and she lived happily with him and her daughter in the city of Jinzhou. During this time, the Japanese invaded China and established the puppet state of Manchukuo.

Chang’s mother, Bao Qin, briefly worked with the Kuomintang, but she found that party to be too brutal and changed her allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party, gradually rising to a prominent position in the party. Here she met and married the high-ranking Communist official Wang Yu, a man who was steadfastly attached to the ideals of the revolution. Some time after their marriage, the couple was required to make the arduous trek to the town of Yibin. After military training, Bao Qin suffered a miscarriage, but she later gave birth to Chang and four other children. This section of the book chronicles Bao Qin’s life through the Great Leap Forward and the resulting famine.

Chang, born in 1952, was a teenager when the Cultural Revolution began, and she joined the Red Guards. Eventually the Revolution turned on Chang’s parents, and they were labeled “capitalist roaders.” They were tortured, and in time her father died as a result of this treatment. Chang herself was sent to the countryside for reeducation, where she worked as a “barefoot doctor” among other tasks. However, the harsh excesses of Mao’s policies and the destructive purges that crushed millions of innocent Chinese, including her parents, created the shadow of doubt. She returned home and began studying English at Sichuan University. At length she received a scholarship to study in London, and she left China and relocated to the United Kingdom in 1978.

This intensely personal memoir is written in powerful yet delicate prose. Its examination of the effects of grand historical movements on individuals living through them provides a vivid depiction of life in 20th-century China, a particularly eventful period of Chinese history.