This lady left China having witnessed the horrors inside of it during the Mao days. She is one of those few that came out and dared to speak out. She really quite an amazing lady~

Wild Swans is a life changing read

THANKS so much for this video! I just finished my reading of Wild Swans and I came to look for videos of Jung Chang and this helped me so much to understand more about her and really SEE who wrote and lived those vicissitudes. Well done, keep sharing!

Jung Chang always came across as such a brave person with a very soft side, especially when she was younger, according to her first novel. She appears to have become much stronger now. I am still reeling from Wild Swans. What an incredible depiction of the pain of the history of China, from a family’s perspective.

I read both books in German language plus Mao's physien's book: I was Mao's personal physician. The personal memories of Dr. Li Zhisui, very enlightening !

I wonder the reason she dislikes Mao was because her family members die during the Culture Rebolution? She said 70M Chinese peasant die during the Great Leap Forward? I read it can be as low as 18M to high of 70M, most believe it is around 32-35M. I am a Taiwanese and a long time US resident. Taiwan and China each have their distorted version of Chinese history. I am trying to be fair and find out the true history. Taiwan has nothing good to say about Mao. But I am sure he has done some good. In the name of "progress" (great-leap), sometime you make mistakes and people will die is the one price you will pay. Other times, you re-gain power by making some people disappear or reduce their power (culture-revolution). It is common practice by many people with power, including US presidents.

As for the deaths constantly quoted under Mao, the exaggerate claims of deaths from starvation were not increased but decreased from the deaths *before* Mao’s reforms owing to Western imperialist interference with China prior to 1950. Look up life expectancy data from 1950 to 1970, and multiply that through the large population. Mao brought live expectancy from 45 to 70 over his career, literacy from 10% to 80%. I sympathize with you as I used to have similar notion but after a lot of work realized I was completely brainwashed within Australia. Upon a lot of research it turns out that Mao did exceedingly more for the people of China than he caused problems and without Mao and their liberation of China from capitalists in the early 1950s, the whole county of China would have followed a path similar to India or Indonesia which both had a similar (even slightly better) initial conditions. Now China has eliminated poverty and has far better health care, higher literacy, economic mobility and business than India or Indonesia and is even catching up to the West which it was exceedingly behind in 1950s when Britain was still bribing and calling the shots over there.

Memoirs can be faked easily. Too easily to even bother with them outside of novelty accessories to the uninfluenced historical record.