I finished Wild Swans during the week. I am now less ignorant than I previously was about the journey of 20th Century China…but I’m sure there are a lot of gaps that still need filling (the same goes for my understanding of middle east politics but that’s a whole other story). The story of China is told here through three generations of women from the one family – moving through the feudalism of late 19th and early 20th centuries, through the rise of communism and the Mao era, through to the present day and the opening up of China to the West. I found the whole thing fascinating. Jung Chang struck a wonderful balance between historical detail and information, with her personal family story. What shone through was her own optimism in the face of an often harsh and violent life. It seems communism is all very well in theory, but doesn’t seem to work very well in practice. I hesitate to offer simplistic explanations of why this may be…but it could because human nature is irrevocably flawed…and to coin a cliche…power corrupts.
I am keen to read her biography of Mao sometime in the future.