Three generations of Chinese women
Wild Swans
By Jung Chang
Flamingo. $16.95
Reviewed by Alex Cooper
Having read Wild Swans once, I found myself wanting to read it again straightaway. This is a fascinating account of three generations of Chinese women: the writer, Jung Chang, her mother and her grandmother.
While the material position of women in China has improved, attitudes don't appear to have changed quite so quickly. Even after the revolution, people seem to have been too willing to condemn Jung's grandmother because she had been a concubine during the 1920s, even though she had no say in it.
A horrifying example of women's lot in pre-revolutionary China was the practice of foot binding. This involved breaking all toes except the big ones, crushing the arches of both feet and keeping them bound so the bones could not heal. For Jung's grandmother it meant years of agony, and for the rest of her life she could not walk properly.
The position of women had improved quite substantially by the late 1940s, and Jung's mother was able to go to university.
Wild Swans describes how the personality cult established by Mao affected ordinary members of the Communist Party. Jung describes the Great Leap Forward, in which 30 million people died from starvation because the peasants were too busy producing steel to plant crops.
Every criticism of the status quo, however well meaning, was labelled anti-party, and many people were labelled as suspicious for no better reason than their links with pre-revolutionary China. This made people fearful of expressing any opinion which might be labelled "rightist".
Wild Swans describes how the Cultural Revolution began as an attempt by Mao to reassert his control over the Communist Party. His targets were Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi, who had revitalised the economy after Mao's mismanagement.
Wild Swans goes into much detail about the violence which became the norm during this period. Like so many others, Jung's parents became targets. Her father was arrested and died before he could be rehabilitated. Her mother, however, survived to see the end of the Cultural Revolution following Mao's death.