“These people need to be able to remember, and to talk about what happened [in the Cultural Revolution]— but that is what censorship stops. And yet the figure picking her away across the hotel restaurant looks, from a distance, like a young girl. : 'Second Swan'), which sounds like the Chinese word for "faded red". As an adaptation of Wild Swans reaches the London stage she tells Alison Roberts about Eastern oppression, Bo Xilai and the book that has never been published in her motherland, The latest lifestyle, fashion and travel trends, Register with your social account or click here to log in. That’s the real solution, as the Empress Dowager could see. People had practiced acting to such a degree that they confused it with their true feelings.
Having lived in China during the 1960s and 1970s, she found Britain exciting and loved the country, especially its diverse range of culture, literature and arts. “We were very worried for her when Wild Swans was first published, of course, and we got her out for a while, but it transpired that she was not harassed or persecuted at all. She has been universally maligned for 100 years, mainly because she was a woman. They also write that Mao had arranged for the arrests and murders of many of his political opponents, including some of his personal friends, and they argue that he was a far more tyrannical leader than had previously been thought. I felt, I very felt… um. With this week’s London Book Fair focusing on China, Chang is pessimistic about the literary life of her homeland. Chang's unique style, using a personal description of the life of three generations of Chinese women to highlight the many changes that the country went through, proved to be highly successful.
Although Cixi is often accused of reactionary conservatism (especially for her treatment of the Guangxu Emperor during and after the Hundred Days' Reform), Chang demonstrates that Cixi actually started the Reforms and "brought medieval China into the modern age. Cixi’s last act was to poison her own stepson, to prevent his rule. "[16], In October 2013, Chang published a biography of Empress Dowager Cixi, who led China from 1861 until her death in 1908. She shakes her head.
The money she earned from Wild Swans, which was “absolutely wonderful”, allowed her not only to give her mother a comfortable old age, but to write her subsequent two books at her own scholarly pace. "Chang has made impressive use of the rapidly expanding range of published material from the imperial archives. Chang writes that she was originally named Er-hong (Chinese: 二鴻; lit. Jung Chang, the bestselling author of Wild Swans tells Sabine Durrant why she’s ruffling more feathers back home in China with her latest book. Are you sure you want to mark this comment as inappropriate? In Wild Swans she said she was "keen to do so", "thrilled by my red armband". There are people who like it less.
My father, in the Cultural Revolution, he absolutely refused to make any sort of compromise. Not the arts.”, Chang herself, who is now 60, came to the UK on a student scholarship in 1978, two years after Mao’s death. In fact, its chances of publication there are slimmer than they were in the mid-Nineties, says Chang — as is any mention of the murderous rule of Mao Tse-tung, the leader of communist China from 1949 to 1976. I am as eager as anyone to see more attention paid to women of historical significance. [4] But by the time of his death, her respect for Mao, she writes, had been destroyed. “I think the authorities might have been rather relieved that I was going into a history rather than a Communist leader.”, Does she think this might be her first book to be published there?
“The thing is, the regime makes it very hard for people to be interested. [11]. [...] Her claims regarding Cixi’s importance seem to be minted from her own musings, and have little to do with what we know was actually going in China. At the same time the government makes it very easy for you to live if you don’t get involved in politics. And if people don’t like it, well…” Is it not a win-win situation? [15] On the other hand, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that while few commentators "disput[ed] the subject," "some of the world's most eminent scholars of modern Chinese history" had referred to the book as "a gross distortion of the records. In 1986, she and Jon Halliday published Mme Sun Yat-sen (Soong Ching-ling), a biography of Sun Yat-Sen's widow. Her manicured nails are as shiny as oyster-shells, but she fidgets a lot, folding the skirt of the dress over and over, and smoothing the buttons. As Party cadres, life was relatively good for her family at first; her parents worked hard, and her father became successful as a propagandist at a regional level. She lives with her husband, the historian Jon Halliday, in a gracious house in Notting Hill. This is my interpretation of her, my take on the facts.” She throws back her head and laughs. It is an imposing establishment.
She explained her change on the stance of Mao with the following comments: The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. She took every opportunity to watch Shakespeare's plays in both London and York. As communists were "deep red", she asked her father to rename her when she was 12 years old, specifying she wanted "a name with a military ring to it."
The Empress Dowager was the same.”, When I ask whether, as the biographer of a powerful woman who had to rule behind the façade of men, she finds sexism still a problem in Britain today, she looks momentarily confused. I try to keep a detached tone, but I never wanted to erase the passion in my writing. The Empress Dowager Cixi with her daughters, circa 1904. But understanding these sources requires profound study of the context. “I love getting to the bottom of things. “Oh yes.” She laughs, and adds: “Oh God.”, “Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine who Launched Modern China” (Jonathan Cape) is available from Telegraph Books. Chang was born on 25 March 1952 in Yibin, Sichuan Province. You can buy banned books in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It is banned in mainland China, though many pirated versions circulated, as are translations in Hong Kong and Taiwan. “He is the one regarded as the hero, but it’s the Empress Dowager who deserves our sympathy!”, Would she agree, I venture, that she had fallen in love with her subject? When I cook I constantly think of my grandmother, who taught my sister and me. But her scholarship is, of course, itself a criticism.
I won’t change this or that to make life easier. But they won’t want to raise my profile.”. “A loud voice in China today is condemning Western democracy and promoting Mao’s style of rule as an alternative. “I think if someone else had written it, it would be fine. As an adapted version of Wild Swans finally reaches the London stage, the book itself, which has sold more than 13 million copies worldwide, is still banned in China. Her chin is up. “In 1993, there was actually a possibility that Wild Swans might get published there,” she says. She is still very feisty, and she is very popular, surrounded by friends.”, Chang is able to travel freely to and from China. It is extraordinary.”. She worries about her mother, Dehong, who is almost 83 and has health problems: “She is a survivor. People say, 'What harm would it do, if you just say a certain thing against what you believe?’ He absolutely refused. “I was able to interview people in China for the Mao book in a way that would not be possible today,” she says. A box suddenly appeared over one discussion saying the ‘item’ was being examined and then, quite soon after, said it had been deleted. “For a while in Britain I had nightmares almost every night — unpleasant scenes, always quite bloody, of physical pain or torture. My mother’s story is told but theirs is not. Anyone who promotes the Mao era as the era most free of corruption, who knows Mao was responsible for the death of well over 70 million Chinese ... it makes my blood boil.”.