I had never felt drawn to China...until reading this book. I read it based of several friends' recommendations, and also because it sounded like a cool way to learn history (I definitely prefer stories to textbooks). And it delivered!
Jung Chang tells the story of her grandmother, her mother, and herself, which spans from the early 1900s to the 1980s.
Before reading this book I knew. . . pitifully little about China.
From Mulan I learned that respect for ancestors and honor to one's family is a huge part of their culture.
From friends and cultural stereotyping, I envisioned China as a place where rigid discipline promoted intellectual superiority.
And, of course, it's a place where industry thrives, and lots of products are exported.
While reading Wild Swans, each of those ideas was challenged.
I knew nothing of Mao Zedong except that he was a communist dictator. I knew nothing of the violence and the oppression that happened under his reign. I knew nothing of the "cultural revolution." I vaguely knew that protesting students were mowed down in Tianamen Square, but that was it.
Now I know. Oh, how to communicate a 600-page book with you in just one blog post? I'll try to condense most of it and then expound upon the parts that struck me most. This is a HUGE post, I know, so feel free to scan and just read what catches your eye. ;)
Her grandmother, Yu-fang
The book begins with the story of Jung's grandmother, Yu-fang, born in 1909. Jung says she was lucky to have received a name--Yu-fang's mother was simply called "number two daughter." Yu-fang's father wanted to move up in the world. Having no sons, he knew that the way to do this was by marrying his daughter well. Yu-fang was raised carefully so that she could marry up. Her feet were bound starting at age 2, in a process that would make Yu-fang pass out because of pain. Her mother would lay huge rocks on her feet to break the bones, and then yards of cloth would bind them. Previous to this I had heard of the practice of foot binding, but hadn't thought about it much or questioned it. It was just a fact.
Yu-fang was the prettiest girl in the village, partially because of her 3" bound feet. Normally bound feet were 4", so it was especially beautiful that hers were smaller. It was tradition that on your wedding day, your future mother-in-law would lift up your skirt to see your feet. If she saw big feet, the whole community would laugh you to scorn. So Yu-fang's mother persisted in the process, even though both of them cried, to give her daughter a better life. Foot binding, fortunately, went out of vogue by the time Yu-fang had a younger sister.
At the age of 15, she was strategically (masterminded by her father) married off to a warlord, as a concubine (one of over a dozen). As a concubine, she wasn't allowed to leave the house or really do much of anything, and she was encouraged to take up opium as a habit, to make her more sedate (she refused). A few years later, the warlord was on his death bed, and Yu-fang ran away with her infant daughter, knowing that if he died, his proper wife would have complete control over her life and would claim her daughter as her own.
Yu-fang was a brave and courageous woman. I was impressed with story after story of this woman's perseverance and fortitude. She pressed on when life got hard; she didn't buckle. She later married a doctor who was many decades her senior, but treated her with respect and married her as a proper wife. She was fiercely dedicated to her daughter, and watched her go through horrendous difficulty...
Her mother, Bao Qin
Jung Chang's mother was Bao Qin, born in 1931. Her life saw huge changes in Chinese government. During World War II China was invaded by Japan. She was a pre-teen at the time and was subjected to harsh Japanese rule. One quick example of that: all the Japanese children went to great school and the Chinese children went to run down schools. All the teachers were Japanese and they forced the 11-year old girls to watch videos of Japanese brutality in the war (dogs ripping apart prisoners that were tied to stakes). They watched the girls to make sure they didn't shut their eyes or make a noise. Then she was forced to witness the killing of her friend, who was caught with a banned book. That's what life was like under the Japanese.
When the Japanese surrendered, they pulled out of China very quickly. There was a power vaccuum left in their wake. Within 2 weeks the Russian soldiers arrived, first greeted with enthusiasm. Then Russians didn't stay very long though, and soon Communists arrived. The Communists, under Mao Zedong, and the Kuomintang, under Chiang Kai-shek, were battling for China at the same time, both professing to be the people's government after years of harsh foreign rule.
The US backed Chiang Kai-shek, so the Kuomintang looked more legitimate--nice uniforms and guns. The Communists were shabby, mostly uneducated peasants. Soon the Kuomintang got control of Manchuria, where Bao Qin lived. After the Kuomintang executed her cousin, Bao Qin (at the tender age of 15!) decided to join the Communists.
Communism
The communists wanted an end to corruption. Officials were supposed to not enjoy the privileges that they historically had. They idealized the working class and scorned everything "bourgeois." They denounced lavish parties and decadence, including the traditional elaborate wedding ceremonies and funerals. Communists were supposed to be loyal to the party over their own families.
Bao Qin got married for love (she refused to marry several suitors she didn't love, rebelliously saying she'd kill herself--the ultimate symbol of protest in China) to an educated Communist official named Wang Yu.
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| Wedding picture in Communist uniforms |
Their young married life was filled with devotion to the party over all else, as the Communists gradually took over China. Bao Qin walked over treacherous mountain passes carrying heavy loads, under party orders, while pregnant, and experienced multiple painful miscarriages. Enduring hardship was part of becoming a good communist.
Jung Chang
Jung Chang was born during the time of the "cult of Mao," where the Communist dictator was essentially deified. There were book burnings (her intellectual father was devastated to get rid of his life's collection of precious books), and Mao's sayings were all that were taught in schools. Community leaders could inflict any sort of Mao-devotion rituals they wanted on their regions--like alarms that ring in the middle of the night so that they could wake up and recite Mao's words before returning to sleep, or "loyalty dances." Slogans and wall posters adorned every building. China, they were told, was a paradise. They were so lucky to be under the Communists, because life had been so harsh under the Kuomintang. There would be regular meetings where people would "speak bitterness," basically recounting stories of hardship and starvation so that the younger generation would appreciate Communism and Mao. If this was paradise, Jung later reflected, then what was hell?
“As a child, my idea of the West was that it was a miasma of poverty and misery, like that of the homeless 'Little Match Girl' in the Hans Christian Andersen story. When I was in the boarding nursery and did not want to finish my food, the teacher would say: 'Think of all the starving children in the capitalist world!” ― Jung Chang
The "Cultural Revolution"
When Jung was a teenager, Mao began what was termed the "
cultural revolution"--one of the darkest times, in my opinion, of China's recent history. Its purpose was to remove anything capitalist, cultural, traditional, or forward thinking from China, and replace it with devotion to Chairman Mao.
What happened during the cultural revolution, you ask?
- Formal learning was discouraged, and pupils were encouraged to beat their teachers.
- Youth were empowered to be violent, forming groups called the "Red Guards" which punished people who were unfaithful to Mao.
- Anything old was denounced and so was anything "frivolously" beautiful.. Youth would tear down ancient architecture, sayings of Confuscious, and anything lovely. Trees were uprooted and grass was torn out.
- Various groups of people were denounced, like intellectuals and artists, and either beaten and killed or sent to labor in the country.
- Mao would make up new groups of people to denounce from time to time to keep up the people's fear and need for the government. For example, he'd say the 10-20% of the population were secretly "capitalist roaders" and needed to be exposed and punished. So community leadership would require leaders of all organizations to produce names of 20% of people that were rebels. 99% of the people were faithful Communists, so the leaders were forced to make up accusations or be accused themselves. Personal rivalries were often settled this way.
- "Denunciation meetings" were held on a regular basis where people would accuse each other and people would have to recite self-recriminations, even to crimes they didn't commit.
- Youth were sent to the country to live with peasants for their own "re-education" - Mao wanted everyone to be like peasants.
- The economy was stifled. Factories began to shut down as the new slogan was: ""To stop production is revolution itself."
- Agriculture was similarly halted as Madame Mao said, "We would rather have socialist weeds than capitalist crops."
- And of course education was looked down upon: "We want illiterate working people, not educated spiritual aristocrats."
- Politics was life. The tea houses were condemned. Games, like Mahjong, were outlawed. There were no places to relax and no recreational activities to do in free time. All people did was promote the party and denounce each other.
- Married couples could only spend 12 days out of the year together, if they were in different work groups.
- Everyone received food rations from the government, so they basically depended on it for everything. This got hard when Mao was discouraging agriculture.
- Officials, who initially were supposed to be close to the people and have no corruption, received many privileges.
- People who liked to keep to themselves were suspiciously called "cutting one's self off from the masses"
- No one felt safe.
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| Children with their "little red books" of Mao's sayings |
Jung's experience in the cultural revolution was quite interesting. She started out being very loyal to Mao. She joined the Red Guards as a teenager, but was horrified by the violence. She went on a pilgrimage to places associated with Mao. She was reassigned to the country to work as a peasant for her reeducation. She wasn't good at being a laborer (coming from a more privileged background) and so her work group was happy to pawn her off as a barefoot doctor when one was called for. Since Mao hated formal education, there was no training for Jung, but she managed to find a manual that helped to some degree. When she came back to the city she was "fortunate" to be put into a factory, and even more fortunate to be chosen out of the factory workers to be an electrician. She was the second female electrician and felt very proud of that. There was, however, no training for that either, and Jung didn't understand when the other electricians tried to explain the concepts to her. So she just did what they did without understanding what she was doing, and managed alright. She only got electrocuted 5 times on the first week.
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| This picture is similar to a denunciation described in the book |
Jung Chang's parents were denounced as "capitalist roaders" and "class enemies." They suffered through countless denunciation meetings and were sent away to labor camps. Jung's father developed schizophrenia and was denied psychiatric help for a long time. After decades of stubbornly devout loyalty to the Communist party, they became disillusioned. Jung herself remembers vividly the first time she questioned Mao Zedong, having been conditioned to punish herself for any such thought. She recounts the people who taught her by example how to think for herself.
Death of Mao Zedong
The cultural revolution came to a screeching halt when Mao died 1976.
Jung wrote,
“The news filled me with such euphoria that for an instant I was numb. My ingrained self-censorship immediately started working: I registered the fact that there was an orgy of weeping going on around me, and that I had to come up with some suitable performance. There seemed nowhere to hide my lack of correct emotion except the shoulder of the woman in front of me, one of the student officials, who was apparently heartbroken. I swiftly buried my head in her shoulder and heaved appropriately.
". . . in the days after Mao's death, I did a lot of thinking. I knew he was considered a philosopher, and I tried to think what his 'philosophy' really was. It seemed to me that its central principle was the need or the desire? for perpetual conflict. The core of his thinking seemed to be that human struggles were the motivating force of history and that in order to make history 'class enemies' had to be continuously created en masse.
". . . The other hallmark of Maoism, it seemed to me, was the reign of ignorance. Because of his calculation that the cultured class were an easy target for a population that was largely illiterate, because of his own deep resentment of formal education and the educated, because of his megalomania, which led to his scorn for the great figures of Chinese culture, and because of his contempt for the areas of Chinese civilization that he did not understand, such as architecture, art, and music, Mao destroyed much of the country's cultural heritage. He left behind not only a brutalized nation, but also an ugly land with little of its past glory remaining or appreciated."
China began to change overnight. The violence stopped. Education started up again. Factories increased in production. Jung Chang studied English at a university in Britain...and wrote this book! The book ends in 1980, so I don't know what really happened next. But now when I see news about the "great fire wall of China" and other such things, I think "they've come so far."
I highly recommend this book. I have to warn you though, it is chilling. The violence described is horrific. The author doesn't dwell on it, however, she just states it matter of factly. To me this is a story of survival, of unconquerable will, and of the preciousness of life and liberty. I will never look at China the same way again.
