Rating: 
Summary: Truly stunning
Review: Wild Swans sat on the coffee table for years as my dad made his way through it- picking it up and putting it down. When I asked if I could read it, I was dismayed that my dad had finally returned it to my aunt. A year later my dad produced a new copy of Wild Swans. This book absloutely changed my world. I believed that all men and women lived like me, oblivious to their worlds and their culture (I was only fifteen when I read this book!). Books have been such a huge part of my childhood but Wild Swans changed the way I wanted to read. Gone are the days of lightwieght stories, but powerhouse novels that move me. This book is truly amazing. Please read it.
Rating:
Summary: Painful, but worth it!
Review: About living in China under the Japanese, the Kuomintang, and mostly under Mao, Wild Swans bowls you over with detail. The grandmother lived first as a concubine. The mother was a communist official, first enthusiastic and later disillusioned. The daughter (and author) finally left China behind and pieced together her family history with the recent history of China. There is beauty in here somewhere but prepare also for loads of ugliness, warped reasoning and misery. Painful to read, by the time you finish you'll be glad it's over, but glad you took the time.
Rating:
Summary: Taking flight
Review: I was amazed by the degree of hardship this family endured and the degree of commitment they had to the very cause that turned on them.This is a very significant personal biography of a three strong generations of women who endured unbelievable circumstances. I had very little knowledge about the Chinese political situation and now feel that I have had a very good education in what the chinese citizery went through in a relatively short period of time. The language of the book was a little stilted--primarily in the first sections. It improved as the book went on. Perhaps this is due to language barriers. It, however, did not change the impact of the writers story. I recommend this book --primarily for those who are interested in a very moving, eduational and personal account of the Chinese experience.
Rating: 
Summary: Impact of 20th century history of people and families
Review: This was another book (I've done this with quite a few books) that I was supposed to read at one point for school, but blew it off after reading maybe a quarter. A while later though, I made the good choice of picking it up and reading it again, all the way through. It's pretty long, and all the details about day to day life at times get overbearing, but it's really a fascinating book, and gives a lot of new perspective on history. Tracing the path of the family through the years, the reader goes through the end of the age of warlords, learns about the Second World War from a new, different angle than we usually hear about it, experience the initial hope and optimism of the Communist movement, and then see how it gives way to disillusionment, then to fear, and finally separates from anything that could be considered humane or decent. History plays an important role in this, but it is still fundamentally a family saga, and here the author does a good job as well, capturing emotions and personalities that span over three generations. I recommend this book, but only if you're the kind of reader that enjoys a lot of extra detail, and interested in historical information as well as a story
Rating: 
Summary: 2 Thumbs Up
Review: This memoir is superbly written,two thumbs up.It's not simply about the life of Jung Chang and her family members but it also tells us the situation in China and what happened politically from 40's to 70's,particularly about the Cultural Revolution.This memoir has shown me how did Mao Zedong conquer the whole China ,how cruel he was,how greedy he was and he might be considered as the devil of 20th century...You'd be grateful to live in your own safe country and you might don't want to leave a grain of rice on your plate after reading the part of Cultural Revolution and "Great Leap Forward."
Rating:
Summary: China's cultural history for the past century
Review: A view of family life for three generations... especially well developed for the time of the communists..Told from the viewpoint of a family highly placed in the communists system.
Details of the life and thoughts of a young communist becoming dis-illusioned over a couple of decades.Told from the inside, the story of the time portrayed becomes unforgettable.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Read/Education
Review: This book is a wonderful gift to the entire human race. It is a story of tragedy, perseverance, love, devotion, kindness, stupidity, insecurity, fear - but mostly tragedy. I found virtually all aspects of this narrative fascinating. Jung Chang gives a personalized view of almost the entire 20th century life in China. The view of 20th century China would be interesting enough from a gender-neutral standpoint but the real depth to the story comes because the book is written from the female perspective. Wild Swans has enough detail and depth about pre-revolutionary China, but more particularly about Communist China, to justify its use as an educational and historical text. The book could quite neatly function as required classroom reading. However, the real beauty of the descriptions of life in China is that it is not written from a third person neutral perspective. It is written from the perspective of someone who lived it and was permanently and unendingly affected by the events taking place in China. Events that affected the author's family and friends in a very personal and horrible way. Jung Chang writes about the lives of her maternal grandmother, her mother and finally herself spanning her grandmother's birth in 1909 to Jung Chang's departure from China in 1978. The book proceeds chronologically from the traditional, male dominated culture that had spanned for millennia and did not really change appreciably until the Japanese invaded the country in 1931. Jung Chang then describes life under Japanese rule for 14 years until Japan's defeat in 1945. The remainder, and by far the longest section of the book describes Chinese existence under the oppressive horror that Mao Zedong and henchmen inflicted on this country and its people. This is one of those true-life stories that make me very glad to be a citizen of the United States. This book reinforces how lucky I am to live in a free and open society where individuality and hard work are appreciated and encouraged. Anyone who thinks poorly of life in the United States should read this book and consider seriously their lot in life versus life in China under the twisted perversion of Mao. I confess that I had a very superficial knowledge about the dynamics of Communist China under Mao. Jung Chang cured me of my naiveté. I assumed Mao was 1) a reasonably bright and talented leader who rose to power behind the concept of a better and more productive China. I assumed that Mao 2) ultimately failed in his goals because communism is not feasible on a mass scale and its foundation goes against basic human nature. I also knew Mao 3) was a megalomaniacal dictator responsible for millions of deaths through torture, execution or mass starvation. After reading Wild Swans, my opinion of Mao has changed significantly. Of my three assumptions above, I now believe only number 3 is still completely true, I believe 2 is partially correct in that communism is a bad idea but it could have worked much better if it were applied by smarter people than Mao. But as for assumption number 1, I really missed the boat. Mao was a [person] with virtually no intelligent ideas or thoughts. All his social programs were disasters and it is only debatable about whether his ... ideas or his ... nature caused greater harm to China. It may be another 100 years before China can shed itself of the lasting effects of Mao's devastation. I was also particularly struck by the degree of thought control that Mao's government forced on its people. This is one of those rare books where I really enjoyed the story and the way the book was written but also I learned so much about a culture and a country that I knew very little about before reading this book. Some previous reviewers complained about the last third of this book being boring. I found the last third the most interesting part of the book. It was not as fast paced maybe but far more disturbing and educational. I recommend this book without hesitation.
Rating:
Summary: Discovering China of the last century
Review: Wow. Yung Chang's portrait of the lives of her grandmother, her mother, and herself in pre-globalization 20th century China held me spellbound and left me permanently altered. Having had no inkling of the abuse, oppression, fear, and megalomania that modern Chinese have suffered under, this book was a watershed for me. I suspect that the vast majority of Americans are as ignorant as I was about modern Chinese culture up until the globalization of commerce. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in broadening their horizons and understanding the world we live in. Although not light reading, this book engages its reader with magnificent descriptions of the Chinese countryside and intimate portraits of the characters. Please read this book and then give it to a friend!
Rating:
Summary: Heartbreaking Story
Review: If you want to learn more about China during the last century, this book is a good one. It is a gripping story about a family with almost incredible perserverance in the face of nearly constant adversity. Although the book does have a happy ending, the majority is very sad bordering on depressing. These people have had very tough lives! It was also fascinating to learn about Mao and the extent to which he controlled every facet of people's lives.
Rating:
Summary: Poignant Portrait of Soaring Above
Review: Ms. Chang (whose birth name Er-Hong means 'another/second wild swan') leads us from the anonymous shadowy past of her great-grandmother's enforced ignominy, her grandmother's struggle to find redemption and peace, through her Mother's blatant heroism and to the emergence from her own chrysalis of Maoism.
Beautifully told, Ms. Chang leaves no one in her family whose story can be shared left out, and like ripples of fingers touching the water's surface, she weaves the lives of those around her family artfully and honestly into her story. While the tale often reads like a Sysiphean struggle, Ms. Chang never neglects the beauty and stubbornly pervasive hope that blossoms through the cracks in 20th century China.
Historical, lyrical, part biography and autobiography, tragic, romantic and inspiring, there are few readers who would not enjoy this book with great satisfaction and end it with a hunger for more.
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