referring to wild swans, chang, what are the goal, success and failurres of chinese revolution
Rita Widiadana (The Djakarta Post)
Ubud ● Monday, Dec 18, 2017
Chinese-built-in British author Jung Chang published her landmark volumeWild Swans: The Three Daughters of China almost a quarter century ago, but her touching and boggling story thrills and deeply moves people until today.
Jung Chang'south volumeWild Swans: The Three Daughters of Cathay continues to captivate readers with its story of vicious political turmoil in China over iii generations of her family — from her grandmother via her mother to herself.
With more than xiii million copies sold and translated into nigh 40 languages,Wild Swanshas become one of the most successful non-fiction books published in the 20th Century.
More chiefly, Chang is a commencement-hand witness and survivor of the cruelty of the Chinese Revolution.
"I chose the championshipWild Swans, because I am a wild swan. The Chinese graphic symbol on the cover of my book means wild swans in Chinese," she says.
She was given the name Er-hong, or second wild swan, the word "hong" meaning wild swan.
"When I was born, my step grandfather said: 'Oh some other wild swan is born.' Wild Swan refers to my mother's name, and then I decided to use the discussion as the championship of the book."
While in the country for the recent Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali, the 65-twelvemonth-old writer looked beautiful and glamorous in her long green silk clothes.
"I dearest what is beautiful. I bought this pretty outfit made by a local designer during my trip to Cartagena, Columbia. Seeing beautiful things makes us happy, and it personally gives me pleasance."
Dazzler and happiness are two words that rarely came to her heed in her early life during Mao Zedong'due south Cultural Revolution.
China, at the time, she recalled, was grim and arid, with people but allowed to clothes in Mao's nighttime blueish or greyness jackets and pants during winter and white clothes in spring and summer.
"If the Cherry-red Guards saw women with long hair and wearing high heels, they would slice them off. Anyone who showed any involvement in his or her appearance was condemned as bourgeois and spiritually corrupt," she recalled.
They did non have public parks or gardens. Entertainment was considered a sinful matter. Books, peculiarly literature, were burned and writers were sent to jail or labor camps, she said.
For Chang, it was impossible to become a author, as nearly all of them were jailed, sent to labor camps or even executed.
"Thousands of words and stories were cheerfully dancing in my mind while I was doing my labor task. I wrote them on my imaginary paper. With that, I survived the extreme hardship."
Born in Sichuan province to prominent Chinese Communist Political party members, Chang experienced the Cultural Revolution first-hand. Like other teenagers, she briefly joined the Red Guards when she 14.
Her father and mother, both respected and high-ranking officials, openly criticized Mao Zedong's policies, which led to their imprisonment. Her parents as well faced public humiliation with ink poured over their heads. Her begetter was sent to a labor military camp, and her mother was held in detention and tortured.
Chang was exiled to the edge of the Himalayas, where she spent several years as a peasant, a "barefoot doc" — treating people in rural areas despite only having bones preparation — and afterward in a factory as a steelworker and electrician.
After Mao died in 1976, Chang was given a scholarship upon graduating from Sichuan University and working there every bit a lecturer.
She was the get-go moving ridge of students immune to leave China in 1978. She became the commencement person from Red china to earn a doctorate in linguistics in l982 from the University of York. Chang met her husband, historian Jon Halliday, in London.
In l988, her female parent came to visit her and stayed with her in London.
"I asked her for more details of her by, our family past, because I wanted to be a writer, and my mother knew that I had this unspoken dream."
Chang said her mother was very brave in opening up her past, her wounds. "During my two years of writingWild Swans, I felt peachy hurting inside my trunk and soul, I had a lot of pain, considering I consciously opened my wounds — mine and my family unit's."
Trauma caused by the Cultural Revolution haunted her, giving her nightmares, even subsequently she had moved to Britain.
"But later on writingWild Swans, they disappeared," she says. "During the writing process, the wound gradually healed. Once you open it, y'all can also heal the wound."
Indonesia is no stranger to the author. Chang and her married man visited the state several times when conducting enquiry and interviews for their book on Mao. They met with numerous people and families affected past the 1965 political upheaval.
"There must be many untold stories to exist told. I think most people don't desire to open wounds, you lot don't want to see claret, heartache popped up once more in your life," she says. "Women — mothers, grandmothers, sisters — play very important roles in this, considering nearly women would detect themselves very strong when they are thrown into harsh circumstances."
Parents, she said, probably did not tell these traumatic experiences, because they wanted to keep their children away from these taboo subjects.
"Families afflicted by 1965 must tell their stories to their children, grandchildren and to the people of Indonesia, so they know the real facts — real history every bit it happened."
In 2005, together with her historian husband, Chang published her other groundbreaking book:Mao: The Unknown Story— a 900-page account of Mao'southward life, the issue of 12 years of research. The book shows Mao every bit one of the most monstrous tyrants of the 20th century.
In the book, Chang and Halliday effort to debunk all myths surrounding Mao. "He was non a great leader. He was right there with Hitler and Stalin."
Mao, she said, dominated her earlier life. "I saw him bringing disaster to my family unit. Both my father and my grandmother died in the Cultural Revolution, and I saw him turning the lives of a quarter of the world population upside downwards, still the globe knew very picayune about him."
The book also says that Mao was no orator and lacked both idealism and a clear ideology, driven instead past a personal lust of power. "North Korean leader Kim Jong-united nations is following in Mao'southward footsteps. He really learned a lot from Mao," Chang said.
Chang's latest book —Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine who launched Modern China, centers on the empress, who ruled China behind the scenes from 1861 to 1908. While in China'due south history the empress was portrayed equally tyrannical and vicious, Chang presents her equally a reformer and a feminist.
Chang says the empress actually started the reforms and brought the medieval China into the modern historic period. The word feminist first appeared in a Chinese newspaper during her reign, Chang pointed out.
"Near history books were written by men. My volume on the empress is written from a woman's perspective."
Now, Chinese women are striving, and have gone and then far as to go scientists, artists, doctors, lawyers and other types of professionals. "Yet, many of them do not know the door was opened for them by the empress."
She attributes this lack of awareness to a failure to read near history. All of Chang's books are banned in mainland People's republic of china.
"It is and then difficult to access my books in China, even in the digital era. Net admission is so strictly controlled, and worst of all, the language barrier prevents them from reading books written in English."
She noted that the nowadays government in China discouraged people from being interested in politics, history, creative writing or literature, instead encouraging them to become successful businessman. Many intelligent people have gone into business as the channel to express their talent, not the arts and literature.
"I love Prc, I love the people so dearly knowing what they have been going through," she says.
Her utmost dream now is to translate all of her books into Chinese to allow people to read them. "I also hope my books go a window for the world to meet China was like."
Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2017/12/18/jung-chang-bravely-challenges-chinas-history.html
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