Jung Chang, writer: ‘If people thought China was so wonderful, they would go there’

Jung Chang rose to fame in 1991 with her memoir Wild Swans, an odyssey based on the life of her grandmother, who became the concubine of a warlord general during the Chinese empire; her mother, a Communist leader who was later persecuted; and herself, a young woman in the Chinese Red Guard disillusioned after the devastating repression of the Cultural Revolution. That young woman, born 73 years ago in Yibin (Sichuan, China), managed to go to London, study, write, and achieve success, and now returns with Fly, Wild Swans, where she revisits a gripping family biography intertwined with the history of China in the last century.

Question. Your book reeks of fear. Do you still feel that way?

Answer. Yes, because I grew up under Mao’s rule and fear was ingrained in our hearts. Today I try to overcome it, not feel it and move on with my life, but it’s still there.

Q. You portray your mother as a great fighter. What was her main lesson?

A. Today she is over 90 years old, very frail, and we can’t talk much, but we can see each other by video call. She taught me to be strong, brave, to do what I believe is right, and to write, to tell the truth.

Q. Do you recognize today’s China, the China of Xi Jinping?

A. It’s very different from Mao’s. I grew up in times of public violence, of horrific accusations when victims were paraded through the streets, beaten, even children beating their parents. And today it’s very different. There is fear and repression, but we can’t go back to Maoism.

Q. Is China more capitalist or communist today?

A. In essence, it’s still communist. In China, you still can’t own land, only buy usage rights for 70 years. People are allowed certain freedoms and to have money, but if the party decides, you can lose everything. There is freedom, as long as you don’t go beyond the party’s limits.

Q. Your worst memory?

A. Seeing my teachers being beaten up at school, seeing my parents tortured, my grandmother suffering immense pain. One of the worst memories was seeing my grandmother faint while my mother was suffering, when she was paraded through the streets, humiliated and tormented. My grandmother fainted in front of me, her body falling stiff as a board, her skull hitting the ground, she lost consciousness, and that moment terrified me.

Q. Your grandmother’s life was marked by the fact of becoming a concubine when she was only 15 years old.

A. She was given to a general to be his concubine in the 1920s, and when he died and my grandmother wanted to marry, her fiancé’s family opposed it because of the dishonor it would bring. His son shot himself and died. Life became impossible for my grandmother; my mother was constantly harassed, and that shaped her personality. That’s why she joined the Communist movement, which promised to end concubinage. But she was later devastated because the Communist women’s association that was supposed to liberate them didn’t want my grandmother either, nor would they sit with her at the wedding.

Q. Is it possible to overcome these traumas?

A. When I traveled to China and spoke with many people for my books, I discovered that when the past was brought up, these people changed and began to tremble; they couldn’t find the words, they couldn’t speak coherently. I realized that the trauma hadn’t been processed into memory, and they couldn’t think about the past without getting lost; they didn’t know what to do, what to say; the pain was too deep. I wish psychologists could have treated it. The memory was deliberately erased, swept under the rug. People were told to ignore it and forget.

Q. You grew up fascinated by Mao.

A. I grew up under a cult of personality. Mao was our God. I myself began to be horrified by the Cultural Revolution when I was 14, yet I didn’t think to blame Mao. He was a given, like eating, dressing, and obeying. Gradually, over the years, when I finally managed to leave China in 1978 at the age of 26, Mao was far from being a god in my mind. The day he died, everyone was crying, but my eyes were dry; I had no tears for him. Later, I researched him for a biography I co-authored with my husband [Mao: The Untold Story, with historian Jon Halliday]. We uncovered horrific truths, and today I see him as one of the most evil people of the 20th century, alongside Hitler and Stalin.

Q. For some years now, you haven’t been able to return to China. Are your books and your fame known there?

A. Today, fewer people know me and my books than 10 years ago. When Wild Swans and the biography of Mao were published, although they were banned, there were pirated editions. But now control is much stronger because of technology. My name and the names of my books are completely blocked. The software and applications that are used there make life very easy; you can pay and do many things, but they facilitate control. That’s why fewer people know me today.

Q. Do you think you will ever see your books published there?

A. I don’t know. It’s unlikely. A lot is happening, like the new purge in the military; people who were key to Xi Jinping’s power base have fallen, and there’s a strong determination to take Taiwan by force. I hope it happens, but we’ll see; there are many variables I’m unaware of.

Q. Do you think Trump will succeed in making China Great Again, instead of America, given what we’ve seen?

A. What Trump has done to his allies is what China wants to see, but that doesn’t make, or shouldn’t make, China a better friend of the West. I don’t think Europeans are so naive as to join the other side simply because they’re unhappy with their own commander. And China doesn’t see democratic countries as friends; it basically wants to use them. These are two different things.

Q. But China’s reputation is improving while that of the U.S. is regressing.

A. I’m not really sure. There are many people and countries that want Chinese money and that’s why they say nice things about China, but nothing more. Refugees risk their lives and cross seas to go to the U.S. and Europe, but nobody is rushing to China. If they really thought it was so wonderful, they would go there. In China, there was a political joke: “What do a Chinese person and a citizen of a democracy have in common? They can both abuse democratic government.”

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