Wild Swans (Jung Chang)

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Wild Swans (original title: Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China ) is a histo - biographical - autobiographical work by the Chinese writer Jung Chang, born in 1952, which was published in 1991 . Jung Chang tells the story of her family in China between 1909 and 1978, with her grandmother Yufang, her mother Baoqin and herself as the main characters.

From the imperial era to the rule of Mao Zedong and his successors in the People's Republic of China , Jung Chang's family experienced the ruthless implementation of political ideas that Jung Chang and her family could only survive with great suffering.

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Jung begins her book by describing the adverse circumstances of her grandmother Yufang's early childhood. She grew up on her father's dislike for his wife, who suffered from epilepsy , and the family did not enjoy a good social position in society. He sold Jung's grandmother, Yufang, to a warlord in North China's Beiyang Army named Xue, who took her as a concubine .

After the death of Xue fled before Yufang Xue's wife with her only child, the mother of boys, in the Manchuria . There she was married to Doctor Xia, much to the displeasure of his adult children. His previous wife had long since passed away; the age difference between Xia and Yufang was 20 years, which is why she was said to be only after his money. But Xia, who is described as a very open-minded and humanistic man, put his love for Yufang before the interests of his family and left his hometown after he had distributed all his belongings as inheritance. They moved to the strategic city of Jinzhou , where Xia had to rebuild his existence from scratch. This period was marked by the Japanese occupation, during which the puppet state of Manchukuo was established in the former province of Manchuria .

At fifteen, Boy's mother, Baoqin, who had previously been noticed for rebellious actions against the ruling Kuomintang , worked for the covert CCP . Shaped by the abuse and oppression of Yufang, she hoped for a social change through the communists, who not least wanted to tackle the emancipation of women.

During the early development of the communists, who no longer had to work undercover, she met Jung's father. He was one of the first to serve under Mao, a guerrilla fighter and at the same time a learned ideologist. They married, according to party protocol, to the great disapproval of Boy's grandmother Yufang. Already on her honeymoon, however, Jung's mother had to learn that her husband gave the party's interests first priority in all matters and hardly supported her when she was caught more and more in the crossfire of slander attacks by jealous party members, as often happened in the newly established party cells . Dejected and exhausted from the constant teasing, Jung's mother and her husband left Jinzhou and moved - partly along the route of the Long March - to Jung's father's hometown, Yibin.

In the years that followed, five children were born after a miscarriage, including Jung, and the family saw the Hundred Flower Movement , the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution . From then on, young was old enough to share their own experiences as teenagers .

After the end of the Cultural Revolution, Jung returned with her brother to Yibin, from where they had been sent to "purify minds" during the revolution. They tried to go to university, and shortly after this success Mao Zedong died in 1976. At the university, Jung studied English and graduated successfully. She then worked as a research assistant and won a scholarship to study in England, where she has lived and written the book ever since.

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The book won the NCR Book Award in 1992 and the British Book of the Year Award in 1993 .

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English
Chinese
  • Chinese   張 戎: 鴻 · 三代 中國 女人 的 故事 , Pinyin Zhāng Róng: Hóng. Sāndài Zhōngguó Nǚrénde Gùshi . Taipei 1992, ISBN 9574302202
German
  • Wild swans. A family story. Three women in China from the imperial era to today. Translated from the English by Andrea Galler and Karlheinz Dürr. Droemer Knaur, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-426-26468-4 ; Complete paperback edition, ibid. 1993, ISBN 3-426-77078-4
  • Extended new edition with a foreword by the author to the English anniversary edition: Knaur-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-426-62705-1

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