Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (Jung Chang)

Wild Swans is an autobiography and the memoirs of three generations of women living in 20th century China. I read this book after my Chinese mother in-law recommended it in the hopes of teaching me a bit about their history and culture, and teach me it did. While this book covers an epoch where politics had a direct and profound effect on everyone's lives without exception, it's main insights lie in the social effects of attempting to force equality onto a people. I feel this story would be well complemented by a book detailing the economic and political landscape during the same period to get a more full understanding of the situation.

Jung Chang starts the book with with her grandmother, born in 1909 to a poor family and given away at the age of fifteen as a concubine to a powerful warlord. One thing that struck me immediately was how traditions that we would today call "old fashioned" or superstitious were still very deeply rooted in China (and the rest of the world) barely three generations ago. The grandmother had to perform endless rituals, treat her superiors a certain way, and never expect things like "a right to the pursuit of happiness". I gained some insight into the history of Chinese values and how some things we take for granted, like how to show love for one another, isn't done the same way everywhere. For instance, in parts of China, one of the absolutely nicest ways to show a person you truly love them is not to hug them necessarily, but could be to give them your best food. This part of the book was not very emotional, perhaps because it was mostly re-told to the author by her mother.

The second part of the book was the mother's story and how the Chinese people, tired of civil wars and the Japanese occupation, were ready for a unified and peaceful country. In the early 1950's, ninety percent of the Chinese worked as farmers, so naturally they welcomed Communist promises of a classless society where everyone receives according to their "need" and gives according to their ability what they feel like. Needless to say, the author's mother swallowed the bait, hook, line, and sinker and started to work for Mao's Red army at the age of fifteen. With a novel revolutionary zeal, she and her husband (who's steadfastness to his principles bordered on the ridiculous) helped with reformation tasks like redistributing the land as they saw fit and "getting rid of" counterrevolutionaries. While the author's parents were, according to the book, never directly responsible for hurting anyone, over 3 million were killed during the first two years of the PRC. Still, people did not complain too much since living standards for most had rapidly gone up after the party, in the name of fairness, confiscated all existing private industry and became rich practically overnight.

The third and most detailed part of the book was that of the author's own life which began in 1952 with 38 million people dying from The Great Leap Forward. Children were being kidnapped and sold for meat on the black market, and economic development had stagnated entirely. While the aforementioned might be seen as an epic failure of economic policy or political theory, Mao outdid himself by following it up with the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976). With the official aim being to weed out the "liberal bourgeoisie" and "capitalist freeloaders", the effect was a level of psychological subjugation which I can barely wrap my mind around. The author walks us through her years as a loyal member of the Red Guard, a farmer, a steel worker, and an electrician, describing in detail the perpetual violence and fear that her family and every one else lived in. The book closes with the death of Mao, ending a regime in which over 70 million Chinese people died. Without exaggerating, during the second half of the story I must have put down the book at least every five pages, shaking my head with eyes closed in disbelief.

After finishing this book I wasn't sure what to think. While I was intrigued by how a catastrophe so great as the Cultural Revolution was even possible, I found much of the story to be so very disheartening. I'll end with a quote which was constantly on my mind while reading this book:

"The typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery. The nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the Western world stand out as striking exceptions to the general trend of historical development." ~ Dr. Milton Friedman (1912 - 2006)