I realise that I am coming late to this book. While friends of mine were discussing this text in their book clubs some eleven years ago, I was always reluctant because of stories of foot binding and all sorts of imagined horrors. So I always demurred and went for an easier option. But recent interaction with Chinese nationals piqued my interest in the country and culture of China.
I can honestly say that this book was an education. I knew virtually nothing about the history of this vast country before opening the book and certainly had little understanding of the experiences of its people over the centuries. This book deals with the lives of three generations of women in the same family and moves from 1908 to 1991. Each generation, it has to be said, suffered greatly and endured much, but nevertheless, survived in a brutal and unforgiving society. People in China have lived through starvation, war, the erosion of civil liberties, yet still they care deeply about Chinese society - from a micro level - the family unit, to the macro level of their country as a whole. That is what struck me most about this book - just how much the author loves China despite all the suffering that she and her family endured at the hands of warlords, Japan and the Communist Party. Despite being tortured, silenced, accused in the wrong, threatened and brutalised, Jung Chang has a deep love for her country and its people.
She struggled to accept that Chairman Mao did not always act for the betterment of the Chinese people: she adored him without question for so long. But the stories that she tells about countless individuals who like her family, were abused and brutalised for decades, have a devastating toll on her and us as readers. It is very difficult to argue in the face of such detailed criticism. Mao was not good for China - the Chinese people suffered greatly at the hands of the Party and still do I am afraid. For me, the most disturbing part of the story, and there are many I must warn you, was the Cultural Revolution, that saw pupil turn on teacher, child turn on parent and the destruction of countless cultural artefacts that are simply irreplaceable. It is hard to consider that so much of Chinese culture was destroyed so pointlessly, just to flatter someone's ego, to appear zealous and to demonstrate affiliation to a Party. The eliteism and inequality in Chinese society under Communist rule came as such a shock to me. I don't know how I was so naive to believe that social equity was part of Communism experienced in China. The competition between people to be seen as better than their neighbours, led them to turn on one another, in a cruel and savage way, but also gave them an opportunity to show great courage and bravery. And that is the amazing thing about this book - everywhere there is a duality and impossible paradox. There is national pride and disappointment, cowardice and bravery, truth and deception, want and plenty, kindness and cruelty, destruction and creativity, selfishness and selflessness - almost on every page. These are elements in every society of course, yet it seems so very pronounced in the world described in this text. Again and again we, as readers, are hopeful that conditions will improve for the citizens, but then things become immeasurable worse until it almost feels that no country has ever suffered as much as the Chinese in the last century!
It is not surprising that this book is banned in China. It reveals an insight into a part of the world that is still quite closed-off to the outside. China is hugely important on the world stage, and is becoming ever more so. Just today, China has implemented new laws that will see the erosion of many civil liberties in Hong Kong - something that must must be so terrifying to Hong Kongers themselves. We take such liberties for granted in the West - the right to protest, complain, elect our political representatives and to vote those we do not support out of power - these rights do not belong to the people on mainland China. Those who speak out do so at great peril.
Yet, one thing that this book championed is the resilience of the Chinese people and how they will go to take care of their families and friends. This will stick with me forever - as will the version of China that is presented in this book.
The author's mother was made kneel on glass, her father was tortured for years although he had given so much of his life and passion to the Party. She had friends who jumped out of buildings because they felt their lives were too difficult to bear, and she tells of countless other agonies that add up to a collection of horrors that are so difficult to explain, unless you have read the book. And you cannot think that such an existence is the domain of the past. I was shocked to find so many echoes of the past in modern day America. Just as Mao claimed that there was no Famine, Trump claims Covid-19 is not something to worry about... Just as Mao always kept an enemy on hand - someone for the public to hate, so too does Trump. He always needs a 'villain' for the America people to hate - be it Comey, Schiff or Clinton. It seems that there are some methods of tyranny that are used by countless dictators the world over.
I hope that the resilience of the Chinese people will continue, despite all the hardships that they have endured in the past and at present. This book has taken me on an amazing journey, from the comforts of my sofa - into the far reaches of a country so distant and different to my own that that alone has been a marvellous thing. Despite this book being banned in China, I see it as a testament to the generations of silenced Chinese people whose stories needed to be told. I have heard those stories and I urge you to read this book and listen too.
By Michelle Burrowes
