Feature on Jung Chang (Wild Swans author)

[roddy]

From the Observer

Talks about her upcoming biography of Mao, among other things. I suspect titbits like this

Unsuspected personal details about Mao, such as his flirtation with Imelda Marcos, are also likely to inflame China's government.

will prevent it making it's way onto the shelves of Xinhua bookshelves. The reaction to this book could be interesting.

Her book, Wild Swans, was probably the biggest influence on non-academic knowledge of China in the 90s. More than once on trips home people have said to me things like 'Oh, China? I don't know much about China, but I did read Wild Swans'

Roddy

[Learner]

Is the book Wild Swans available in Chinese? If so, what is it called? And how is Jung Chang's name written in characters?

Thanks.

Learner

[zhwj]

Hong Kong / Taiwan edition: 张戎，《鸿》，金土出版社，1999年.

I'd imagine it's online for download somewhere, but a cursory search doesn't bring it up.

[Learner]

Thanks, zhwj.

Learner

[Lu]

张戎

So that's how to write her name. In Wild Swans she says about her name that some teachers at school didn't recognise the character and for a long time I've been wondering what character it was. Thanks.

[roddy]

This book is now at no.3 on Amazon UK's Hot 100 Books list.

Now bear in mind that this book is

a) a political biography. Not generally best seller material, yet it's coming in above The Davinci Code, dietbooks and cookery manuals. It's only beaten by Harry Potter. (If you ever want to dispair of British culture, I heartily recommend a look at Amazon's top 100)

B) it's not even out yet. These are pre-orders.

No matter what you think about the content of the book, that's pretty impressive.

Roddy

[geraldc]

Full RRP for the book is £25!!!

Extract from an interview in the Sunday Telegraph. It really does show which side of the "was Mao good or bad?" fence Jung Chang stands (sorry for posting such a large chunk of the article, but the Telegraph sometimes needs registration to read articles). I expect this book will never see light of day on the mainland...

"They're not going to like this book much, then, I suggest. "No, they're not," she replies flatly. "It won't be published in China but it will be smuggled in and I am translating it into Chinese for publication in Taiwan and Hong Kong." I imagine that her argument about Mao being as evil as Hitler and Stalin will go down well in the People's Republic. "But it's true!" she says. "Mao was responsible for the deaths of 70 million people in peacetime, through his organised famines and purges. That makes him the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world."

But surely nothing he did can compare to the hideousness of the gas chambers?

"No, but Mao did create a climate of almost unparalleled fear, suspicion and hatred. The terror was such that parents were even afraid of talking to their children. Mao was different from Hitler and Stalin in that he liked to have people tortured and executed in public. Hitler and Stalin did their torturing and killing in secret. And whereas those two European despots were condemned in their own countries shortly after their deaths, Mao is still a holy cow in China. For as long as his portrait and corpse remain in Tiananmen Square, China will never be able to move on and grow as a country."

Clearly Chairman Mao was a monster - he was as cruel to his own close family as he was to the nameless masses - but did Chang find any aspects of his character she liked? "As 'liking' implies a moral dimension I can honestly say there is nothing I like about Mao. But I was constantly impressed by his ability to scheme and come out on top when he seemed to be in a hopeless situation. He was smart. He could outsmart even Stalin. And he was far-sighted. He knew he could only conquer China with the help of Stalin and he knew he would have to use terror and brainwashing to keep hold of power."

[fenlan]

In pinyin jung chang is Zhang Rong. Her book is out now, but no Chinese translation yet. She is working on that. It will be a cracker. Lots of bits in the book are an upset to the KMT version of history just as much as the CCP version. Will it cause a sensation in Taiwan? Or is mainland history no longer really relevant to the KMT there? I hope it comes out in Simplified characters as well as Traditional.

[nubix]

I am only now reaching the end of Wild Swans... what a coincidence. I can just imagine the direction that will be taken in the new book. At the moment I feel a little stunned by what I have read in this first book.

[tokyo_girl]

Does anyone know when the paperback is likely to be out?

I'm busting to read it.

[fenlan]

Apparently pirate versions in Chinese of Zhang Rong's book on Mao are circulating in China (see http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-8-14/31228.html). Does anyone know if there are versions in Chinese on the Internet?

[wushijiao]

I recently finished reading Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. I won’t write a long review because there are already plenty of great reviews out there. See:

http://www.metacritic.com/books/authors/changjungandjonhalliday/mao

The book doesn’t really have the tone of a historical biography, but rather the tone of a ferocious and passionate anti-Bush book. The thesis boils down to: Mao was a utterly horrible person who senselessly slaughtered 70 million people to maintain political power. The rest of the book provides evidence to convince the reader of that point of view.

In addition to the drawback of one-sidedness, the book also makes some dubious historical claims (Andrew Nathan’s review explores those in depth). Nonetheless, the narrative is exceedingly well written, and the book has quite a few new insights into Mao and the CCP, which mainly come from the hundreds of interviews and declassified Soviet documents. Although professional historians probably loathe the book’s virulent tone, they’ll probably have to take the book seriously because it does include a lot of new information and fresh insight that will forever change the discourse on Mao. Among the most damning new evidence, at least from a Chinese nationalist point of view, Mao consistently refused to fight the Japanese invaders, and instead spent his time and energy purging, torturing, and murdering CCP officials in order to consolidate his own stranglehold on power.

Despite these reservations, I’d still recommend the book. It’s entertaining, lively, and full of scandals and massive blood baths that are guaranteed to repulse, infuriate, but keep the pages turning.

[bhchao]

I read a section where individuals during the Cultural Revolution were tormented to the point where they jumped off buildings to end their psychological misery.

[hakkaboy]

I fully agree that Jung Chang's book needs to be taken seriously. There are 2 main criticisms. One is quite accurate: that all the points made in the book should have been footnoted. There are no footnotes, and so we cannot see the sources for individual points. There is just a bibliography giving the sources for each chapter, but not for each point. An academic book would need to have individual footnotes for each point. The second criticism is that it paints an unreal picture of Mao as an evil man. But no one made this criticism of books about Hitler, although recently the tendency is to produce books that show the "human" side of Hitler, as in the film Downfall. But the source material may not be available to do the same to Mao. I believe having read part of the book that the image of Mao as power hungry and not really believing in communism is correct. What I found interesting was that the Luding Qiao event never happened. Supposedly the 共匪climbed over a burning bridge hand over fist under enemy fire. But as she points out: why no casualties!!! And why do the peasants living near the bridge say that it didn't happen! And also I noticed that even in the 1920s, when Mao controlled just one county, the population was reduced by 90% following a serious of murderous campaigns. This book would be dynamite were it available in China. I only hope that it becomes available on the Internet. Too many Western academics seem to be furious that Jung Chang has written a better book on Mao than they did, and so they are criticising it. Also many of these academics are former commies, who don't like to see Mao painted as worse than Hitler. Why not?

[wushijiao]

I agree hakkaboy. I found the information and statistics about when Mao ruled Jiangxi to be one of the most interesting parts of the book.

Too many Western academics seem to be furious that Jung Chang has written a better book on Mao than they did, and so they are criticising it.

According to Metacritic (which I provided the link for above), Jonathan Spence gave Mao the worst review. Unfortunately, his full review is blocked without an expensive subsciption. I've read his biography of Mao as well, which was also good, but in some ways not as good as Jung Chang's version. The biggest difference, if I remmeber Spence's version correctly, is that Spence argued that a lot of Mao's unintentionally disasterous policies were only possible because he had lost any real contact with normal people (after 1955 or so), which Spence blamed on both Mao and his inner staff. Chang, on the other hand, shows that the policies were deleberately intended to cause misery, and Mao had a very callous and dismissive attitude towards the suffering of regular laobaixing. Chang, it seems to me, has the more plausible version of events.

In other words, some historians may be concerned about the histroical background for the conditions that produced Mao. Or they may be concerned with the external events that made Mao act the way he did. Chang is more concerned with what Mao's character actually was. Clearly, the personality of a national leader always affects a country's citizens. But this is even more true in dictatorships, especially when almost every aspect of daily life is controled by one person.

[bhchao]

I read more of this book yesterday and was surprised to see the comments Jung Chang made about Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists, compared to the comments she made about Mao and the Communists.

For example, she wrote that "Nationalist killings were a drop in the ocean compared to what Mao did." Furthermore, she wrote that the idea of a United Front between the KMT and the communists against Japan was first suggested by Chiang, and that Mao outright rejected it. Ever since the Xian Incident, history has been rewritten according to her.

Mao was adamant in his insistence that Chiang be killed, but Stalin overruled him. Stalin wanted to keep the Nationalists and Communists busy against the Japanese to prevent Japan from advancing to the north towards the Soviet Union.

Equally stunning was that the outbreak of war with Japan in 1937 was instigated by a communist mole pretending to work for the KMT named Zhang Zhizong (Jung Chang calls him by ZZZ). Zhang was secretly working for the communists at the time. Neither Chiang nor the Japanese wanted a war to engulf in Shanghai, but Zhang instigated an incident to make it all happen.

According to Jung Chang, ZZZ had a Japanese lieutenant and a private kiilled by a Chinese battalion. ZZZ then ordered a Chinese prisoner be deliberately shot and killed, who was under sentence of death at the time. ZZZ then placed the dead Chinese prisoner several feet in front of the dead Japanese lieutenant and private, to make it look like there was a firefight.

Both Chiang and the Japanese worked to defuse the crisis, but ZZZ fanned widespread anti-Japanese sentiments by reporting in the media that the Japanese started the crisis. Chiang was backed into a corner and had no choice but to respond strongly against the Japanese, This was the chain of events that initiated full-scale fighting in Shanghai.

Chiang was furious towards ZZZ afterwards, but did not expose the latter's provocations to the public.

And I was surprised to see the negative comments she had on Zhou Enlai, considering that many people view Zhou in a more positive light than Mao. She mentioned that Zhou was a pawn who acted according to Mao's wishes. Personally my view of Zhou is not bad, but I was quite surprised to read her comments about him.

She mentioned that one of Chiang's downfalls was his strong feelings towards Song Mei-ling. Chiang often let personal feelings dictate his actions. Mao had none of Chiang's soft spots, and was ruthless towards others to preserve his own power. Not surprisingly, it was Mao who triumphed at the end.

What I found interesting was that the Luding Qiao event never happened. Supposedly the 共匪climbed over a burning bridge hand over fist under enemy fire. But as she points out: why no casualties!!! And why do the peasants living near the bridge say that it didn't happen!

Makes one think that history is often written or revised by the victors. I wonder if there are any KMT sources (or veterans in Taiwan) that can confirm whether that event really happened.

[wushijiao]

Just an update: walking along the street today in Shanghai, I noticed that the pirated book stalls had a version of this Jung Chang's Mao, translated in 繁体字, so, probably from Hong Kong or Taiwan.

It's also interesting to note that almost all of the illegal book stalls feature political HK/ Taiwan-printed books about the CCP, current politics, or recent Chinese history. I think this trend started around the time of the downfall of Chen Liangyu, and just hasn't slowed down.