Re: Jung Chang
- From: "ltlee1@xxxxxxxxxxx" <ltlee1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:15:07 -0700
On Oct 31, 3:38 am, PaPaPeng <PaPaP...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I disagree with Chang's conclusions but I have not read her book.
Chairman Mao was many things including blunders in policy that caused
the the sufferings and deaths of millions. But I believe Mao's
current popularity inside China is the correct assessment of his
legacy and his place in history. Without Mao there would not be the
China of today. That achievement alone forgives all sins.
Freedom's champion
Jung Chang remains the world's most popular and passionate advocate of
human rights in China. As the Beijing Olympics approach, Natalie
Hanman meets her
The west is selling human rights by arm-twisting today like they were
selling opium by arm twisting before.
Tuesday October 30, 2007http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/history/story/0,,2201838,00.html
Guardian Unlimited
'The impact of Mao: An Unknown Story is like an atom bomb' ... Jung
Chang. Photo: Eamonn McCabe
Five thousand miles from Beijing, host of next year's Olympics, Jung
Chang is seated in the first floor living room of her spacious west
London home, squirming with anger at the thought that everyone who
goes to the games will see Mao Zedong's portrait on Tiananmen Gate.
"This man who did as much damage to mankind as Hitler or Stalin and
yet he's still revered by the Chinese regime," she says in disbelief.
"That itself is so awful. I do hope people who go to the Olympics will
make some outraged comments about that."
Mao: The Unknown Story, Jung Chang's 2005 biography of the leader of
the People's Republic of China, written with her husband, the
historian Jon Halliday, was the result of 12 years' research into what
she claims were the brutal realities of China's Cultural Revolution -
what Chang terms "a Holocaust of the Chinese culture" - and the man
responsible for the deaths of 70 million Chinese people in peacetime.
It aims, she says, to unravel "the myth of Mao", a figure who haunted
the political shadows of Chang's first, much more personal, book, the
1989 worldwide bestseller Wild Swans.
Mao: The Unknown Story divided academic opinion following its
publication, with some critics questioning her unrelenting focus on
the horrors of Mao's regime. But Chang remains defiant: "Our book
really has subverted the received wisdom so far among Western
academics, which is very close to the communist official line - that
Mao has done some good things and some bad things ... Our book has
completely showed how wrong that line was."
With 12 months to go until the Olympics, Chang is acutely aware of the
international attention focused on the country's ongoing human rights
violations. Amnesty International reports that China executes more
people each year than the rest of the world put together; torture and
detention without trial are widespread; and severe restrictions are
imposed on freedom of expression - a subject that has personal
resonance for Chang since both of her books are banned in her
homeland.
"I'm directly affected by censorship," she says. "I feel awful [about
it], particularly about Mao: The Unknown Story ... The Chinese
language edition, which I spent more than a year translating, is very
close to my heart, it is the most important edition, and the people
who I most wanted to read the book are Chinese, mainland Chinese, and
I really feel very angry about it.
"It's not just my book - all books about 20th century Chinese history
are banned if they don't toe the party line. And even if they toe the
party line, they still are not allowed to discuss, for example, the
period of the Cultural Revolution ... That subject itself is taboo."
As, indeed, is any mention in print of not wanting the Olympics to
take place. Will freedom of expression ever be a reality for the
people of China? "Not in the near future," she says. "China was not
like this before the communists took power. The control on the media
is tighter today than 100 years ago."
Self-assured and eloquent, Chang's command of her subject is evident
in her writing but even more obvious face-to-face, her lived
experience reinforced by her learning. She was the first Chinese
person - woman or man, she is quick to point out - to receive a
doctorate from a British university after winning a scholarship to
study in the west two years after Mao's death in 1976. At York
University, she was able to free her thinking, she says, to undo "the
deadly knot that a totalitarian education had fixed on my mind".
When Chang was young, books were banned across China, her only
material those publications her brother bought on the black market,
sold by people who couldn't bear to see them burn. She read Chinese
and foreign classics, and was particularly influenced by Victorian
female writers such as Jane Austen and the Brontës - "I felt an
affinity with them; the sensibility and sensitivity expressed by them
somehow struck a chord" - as well as 19th century Russian writers. "I
remember reading Turgenev's First Love when I was 17 and I was exiled
to the edge of the Himalayas," she recalls with a smile. "I was very
ill. I was just lying in bed, or sitting in a wicker chair,
convalescing and reading. I could memorise many passages.
"These books nourished my sentiment, like culture does to people, and
this is why I think Mao destroyed culture in such an extreme way,
because he wanted to dehumanise the Chinese and to rob them of their
feelings."
Chang is conscious of the effect her books have had, not only on
international audiences hungry for information about an increasingly
powerful country but also Chinese readers who have been "deceived
about their own history".
"The impact of Mao: An Unknown Story is like an atom bomb," she says.
Chinese readers that had access it - either in Hong Kong or through
pirated or online versions - felt as if "they'd been living in lies".
And while internet police in China may have deleted the many blogs
that reference the book, their abundance proved to Chung that it had
had a political and personal impact.
The act of writing a book that Chang knew would be banned was an act
of defiance in itself. "I knew when I was writing Mao how subversive
it was because the book shocked me myself ... I continued to write it
not because I wanted to court controversy - I don't like fighting -
but once we found the truth, I felt an obligation to reveal. I will
certainly continue to write.
"But of course, I live abroad," she goes on to qualify, "so for
Chinese writers who have to make a living there and can't afford to
get on the wrong side of the regime, they have to watch their words."
Many hope that the international attention next year's Olympics will
bring may change this situation. Does Chang share these hopes? "I
don't think the Olympics should be boycotted. China is making progress
- slowly, too slowly in some areas, stagnating in others ... But
boycotting might be counter-productive [and] I don't think it will
force the Chinese regime to change.
"The regime wants to impress, it doesn't want people to boycott the
Olympics, and therefore they have to relax the repression and
therefore human rights conditions improve. But I do hope that will
last after the Olympics is over."
Wild Swans, which traced the lives of three generations of Chinese
women - Chang's grandmother, her mother, and herself - exposed how
women as well as men suffered as a result of injustice in 20th century
China, something which Chang still witnesses today. "The one-child
policy is an extreme policy in reaction to an extreme situation, which
is that China does have this tremendous population problem. But it is
also human tragedy, and a lot of women suffer. All these forced
abortions we hear about, some of which are carried out in an extremely
cruel way.
"China is still very much a male society, and if you do well one sign
is to have something like a concubine - there is a term for it,
something like number two wife or number three wife. A lot of rich
businessmen and officials do that in a big way."
Does she see herself as feminist? "It depends on what we mean by
feminism. I'm all for women's independence and equality vis-à-vis men,
so in that sense I am a feminist. But I don't think there [should be]
warfare between men and women - I love my husband! We work together
very well."
Chang and Halliday's successful literary partnership is, she
acknowledges, a rare blessing. Co-authoring Mao: The Unknown Story
with her husband was, she says, "absolutely wonderful. It's one of
those things that either they work or they don't work, and in our case
it worked." They divided their research by language - she dealt with
the Chinese-language sources, while Halliday, who is multilingual, was
landed with the rest of it, much to Chang's affectionate amusement.
As for their next project, "We're both waiting for inspiration," she
says. Chang still feels busy with Mao - translations, speaking tours,
book promotions in the 30 countries in which it has been published -
while Halliday is "Mao-ed out". "At some stage," Chang says,
"something will come to me, but I think this time not another 12
years!"
In the meantime her homeland remains a passionate concern. "When I
first came [to Britain] in 1978, it was so close to the Cultural
Revolution and ... I just wanted to forget about China. But when I
started writing, it returned to my heart."
· At 6.30pm tonight, Amnesty International and Index on Censorship
present Jung Chang in conversation with Philip Dodd at the Human
Rights Action Centre, London. Visitwww.amnesty.org.uk/eventsfor more
details.
.
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