Rating: 
Summary: China - before, during & after Mao
Review: This is the best memoir about China that I've read (including both "Life and Death in Shanghai" and "Red Azelea", both of which are excellent). The writing is wonderful! But more, the story evolves through 3 generations, from pre-Communist China, through the days leading up to the October 1949 Communist state, the early days of Communist China (including very important, personal factual accounts about the so-called "Great Leap Forward," etc.), through the Cultural Revolution, and into the dawn of post-Mao China. It is written from an almost unique point of view, by a daughter of 2 Communist Party members, both mid-level cadre. The daughter, now living in the West, brings to the memoir a clearly deep and abiding love of China, of the Chinese people. Although she gives credit to the Communist Party for things done right, esp in the early years of the revolution, she also takes dead-on aim at the party's (and esp its highest leaders') acts that caused incredible suffering for tens, hundreds of millions. It is a wonderful book. If you have an interest in Chinese history, in Mao's China, and the dawn of early post-Mao days -- then find this book and read it!
Rating: 
Summary: A Complete Yet Engaging Historical Account
Review: I was given Wild Swans to read prior to a summer trip to Beijing. Being a high school student, I was not only daunted by the heft of the book, but by the extensive historical chronology and family tree in the introduction as well. I was also unsure as to whether the story would be a Chinese-generation plot along the lines of Amy Tan or whether it would be more of a strict historical recount of China in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Despite my apprehensions, I decided to go ahead and read it, and I have been thoroughly delighted with the results of my endeavor.
Wild Swans is what I would term a "human-interest history," meaning that the dry historical aspect of the book is tempered by the human emotion surrounding the individual events. Jung Chang uses the female leaders of each generation to provide a thoughtful outlook on the traditions and culture of China. For me, the best way to gain a true feel for the attitudes of a specific time period is to hear a personal account. This is the book's most salient quality. Chang makes the most of the little details that encompass the environment of the characters and uses the thoughts and feelings of her family to convey key concepts pertaining to Chinese morals and behaviors.
The concise language of the book also helps to promote these historical images and gives the book a quick tempo. Each anecdote is told in the same, somewhat removed manner, even Chang's own experiences. While some might find this an impersonal tactic, I felt that it allowed the tragedies of the story to shine by basing them purely on their own facets. Any extraneous writing would have clouded the sheer pain involved in a number of the events, and Chang's distance allows the reader to recreate the scene and absorb the historical depth behind it. Chang's own academic experience provides a particularly striking cultural contrast to typical Western thought processes and teachings.
Of course, there are some minor flaws in the book. Chang tends to gloss over her father's upbringing and adolescence and lingers on her grandmother's trials during her youth and during the Communist takeover, resulting in some unbalanced character depictions. Chang's privileged lifestyle prior to and then under the Communists also provides a lopsided view as to the true reign of Mao and the general state of China during the early Communist years. However, bias is to be expected whenever dealing with a personal account, and these deficiencies become lost in the greater framework of the book.
I have learned more from this book about Chinese history than I could have ever hoped to acquire from a guidebook or textbook. I highly recommend this book to anyone planning to travel to China in the near future or for anyone who is looking for an informative, yet entertaining, story of a family in China over the years.
Rating:
Summary: Outsanding
Review: (Aug 2003 release) Being interested in Chinese culture for sometime, I finally found a book that has given me something other than state sponsored history facts. I came across this book by accident. I began reading at the bookstore on Saturday evening and wasn't able to put it down until going to work on Monday morning. This book made me laugh, cry and scared the **** out of me in some places. It has definitely given me a wider perspective on the Chinese people and its culture. I'm looking forward to the release of Jung Chang's next book on Mao due out this year.
Rating:
Summary: An entertaining and educational account of Communist China
Review: Wild Swans is a riveting story of the lives of three women in 20th century China. It delineates the lives of a concubine grandmother, a communist spy mother, and a student daughter. This was an extremely comprehensive book containing not only the life stories of three generations of a family, but also the stories of their relatives, relations, and of historical occurrences. It gives an extraordinary first hand account of China's history spanning from imperialist China to the rise of communism, and through the Cultural Revolution. Jung Chang does a very good job of describing and explaining the history of China and the changes that occurred, including details down to what kinds of foods people ate during certain time periods. She gives descriptive images of shocking oppression and violence, which had been everyday occurrences in China. Although these descriptions initially prevented me from putting the book down, near the end, the violence does become somewhat repetitive and tiresome (yet you can't blame the author because constant violence was part of China's history). Overall, I think this was a very fascinating book. The author successfully gives a detailed description of the history, recounting tales of the various things different families went through, while also telling the dramatic stories of her relatives. She does a good job of describing what people went through during the changes in Communist China and after reading this book, I have gained a very clear understanding of what happened during the time and why it happened. This was a very entertaining book which I also learned a great deal from.
Rating:
Summary: A history of china with a perfect prespective
Review: There are few histories that read as well as this one. It tells the history of three women who see three ages of china. A grandmother who lives during the war lord period, the nationalist and Mao. A mother who is loyal to her party who along with her whole family is tormented and tortured under Mao. And finally a daughter who is raised in the cult and the disilluion of Mao. This book is also a great introduction to modern chinese history. The reasons for the rise and fall of all the political regemes in china are outlined. As well the faith and loss of faith in communism in china is well out lined. This history is factual and personal at the same time. Her is a look at three generation of Chinese who struggled with warlords,the Kumingtong and the cultural revolutions. Women and men of character who were tormented for their belief by there own political party. I loved this books and believe that Chung Jung has created a master work that is for all time. This is hard to say about a history, but the truth is in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent historical account
Review: This book does something that most people don't get around to doing when they say this or that about China: Provide historical detail. Specifically of interest: 1. The reason that the Kuomintang was not successful in China was constant corruption. Some people have suggested that Chinese people love tyrants (Jasper Becker, "The Chinese") and this is the explanation of why they rejected what would have been a democratic government for an authoritarian government. This is partially true, but the Kuomintang blew any chance that it had at legitimacy with its rampant corruption. 2. That the Communist Party became popular because they promised to not be like the corrupt and crooked Kuomintang. Her father is an example of one of the wide-eyed idealists that really believed in his cause at the beginning and was left a broken man when he saw what actually became of this grand vision. People at Western universities are always attacking the West and praising the Communist ideology/ governent allocation of resources, and they haven't a faintest idea of the actual RESULTS of the intended programs. Nor do they understand the incentive structures that led to those results. 3. Historical accounts of the great famine. I can't believe that this very afternoon, there are still people trying to talk away this historical event in China and say that it was just a statistical illusion. This is the second author that I've read that gives historical accounts of people eating their children. 4. Demonstrating how the cult of Mao was created and maintained, as well as what were his motives in the various campaigns (Cultural Revolution/ The Great Leap Forward) that swept the country during his reign. Another author (Anhua Gao) has also noted that Mao generated a lot of morass in the country because the weaker the country, the easier it was to control. But her detail is not comparable to the author of this book. She showed the self-denunciation meetings and the stages of his campaigns to keep the country divided and fighting against itself. It may be another 200 years before China shakes off the residual results of his rule (such as overpopulation and then the resulting sex imbalance that has come about because of population control), but here in this is an example of WHAT happened, and HOW it happened. 5. Showing the highly ritualized behavior of Chinese people in things such as foot binding, etc. A lot of people may come to China and wonder where people here get their ideas from and why they are prisoner of them. This author demonstrates that it's been that way for a *long* time. And it may never change. It's hard to recommend this book enough times for someone who wants *actual results* of what happens in the context of a Communist Revolution, as opposed to the vague ramblings of something like the Communist Manifesto or state-sheltered academics in Western universities.
Rating:
Summary: China: Through The Eyes Of The Women
Review: I picked up this book to keep me company on a long-haul flight to Hong Kong. I soon found myself engrossed in the story. It very effectively describes the recent History of China through the eyes of three generations. As it is told from the viewpoint of the women, it gives a perspective on how major political changes affect the lives of every household and every aspect of day-to-day life. It gave me a much deeper understanding of Chinese culture. It is one thing to know what foot-binding is, quite another to read a description of it by someone who has endured it. This is one of those books that will stay with you forever.
Rating:
Summary: cronology....
Review: Reading is (or should be) pleasure... Some books gives mere pleasure, and some keeps us occupied 'till those late hours "when only poets and assasins dwell"...And some makes us cry, some makes us laugh, some makes us rage in fury and some makes us to think.
This book makes us do all of that ('xcept the first thing :)) and more....
Story of a life in Emperror's and Mao Zedong China... story of fragile era which could have been broken several times, story of people who let the political struggle interfere with their lifes (don't get me wrong, it's not like they had a choice), story of human cruelty, of madness, of hatred, of lust for power, in fact, story about everything you see and hear in a world around you, about everything you dream that it won't happen to you or one of your frend or relatives... and the sad part of it is...it's the biography (or cronography as I call it, life of a several individuals are shown)...
To see and hear suffers of an oppresed in supposedly liberated working class in CP China, kinda lifts up the weight of one's life in such authocratic state as former Yugoslavia was, nothing that our secret services could have don compares to horrors of Cultural Revolution...
And boiled to the fact, what remains again are human destinies interwoven in an formless pattern that build a history...and when it comes to human history, we encounter blood and death...this book represent (if anyone doubted it at all) truthfulness of T.Hobbes saying: "Homo homini lupus..."
Rating:
Summary: Would that It Were More Honest
Review: The first half of this book is well written and quite interesting as a personal memoir; the rest is less engaging, as it became closer to a chronicle than a memoir. Even still, I have mainly admiration and not criticism for the writing; it is the content that concerns me. I am from the same province as the author and also lived through the Cultural Revolution. Westerners might have heard only about the Red Guards, however all Party members, including those who later became victims, were participants in the movement (and other movements before the Cultural Revolution). I can understand why the author chose to portray her parents as purely victims or even heroes against the Revolution -- after all, we Chinese have thousands of years of tradition "avoiding anything that may compromise the name of an intimate." In reality, it was simply impossible for a Party cadre like the author's parents not to be an active participant in the movements, until they themselves become victimized. To me this was the true tragedy for us Chinese. I wish the book had been more honest in this aspect and given a more complete picture to western readers about what happened. I think this honesty would make the book even more valuable. Another thing that bothers me is that the author chose to translate "xuan-chuan-bu" ("the Department of Propaganda") as "the Department of Public Affair". She noted this was "in order to describe their functions accurately". But the former translation is far more accurate, literally and in terms of function. Perhaps this change was made because the author's father was a co-director of such a department in the Communist Party. Such a change seems unnecessary to me.
Rating:
Summary: An important but laborious study of three Chinese women
Review: While undeniably an important work on the lives of women in transitional period between tradition Chinese culture and Communist Revolution, I found this book to be incredably laborious to read, so much so that I was deterred from finishing it. The author could very easily have conveyed everything that she wanted to in much fewer pages.
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