Jung Chang – Fly Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China
17th October @ 17:00 – 18:00
Jung Chang’s Wild Swans was a book that defined a generation, an epic personal history of Jung, her mother and grandmother – ‘three daughters of China’. From her grandmother’s birth in 1909 under the last emperor, through Mao Zedong’s rule, the Cultural Revolution during which Jung’s parents were subject to unbelievable suffering, it finishes as the end of the Mao era in 1978 with Jung’s emigration to Britain. At the time she was one of the first Chinese to leave Communist China for the West.
Nearly half a century on, China has risen from a decrepit, isolated state to a global power. Through those decades, Jung’s life has been intimately entwined with her native land.
Fly, Wild Swans is the sequel and brings the story of Jung’s family – along with that of China – up to date. China is now at another watershed moment: Xi Jinping is seeking to turn the country back towards the old Maoist days and build a Communist state with capitalist features. This new era is greatly affecting the lives of Jung and her mother who still lives in China. Through the arc of their respective lives, Jung gives an immersive, deeply moving and unforgettable account of what it is like to live in a communist dictatorship and the threats modern China poses to the international world order.
JUNG CHANG was born in Sichuan Province, China in 1952. During the Cultural Revolution she worked as a peasant, a “barefoot” doctor, a steelworker, and an electrician before becoming an English-language student at Sichuan University. She left China for Britain in 1978 and obtained a PhD in Linguistics in 1982 at the University of York – the first person from Communist China to receive a doctorate from a British university.
She is the author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, which has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. She wrote a ground-breaking trilogy of the history and personalities of modern China: Mao: The Unknown Story (with Jon Halliday); Empress Dowager Cixi; and Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister. She has been awarded a CBE for services to literature and to history.
Tickets £16.00 (£12.00 Students)
