Jung Chang

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand seven.

Presenter0:27

My Castaway this week is the author Yung Chang, best known for Wild Swans, a vivid, intimate, real life saga spanning three generations of women surviving under Communist rule in China.

Presenter0:39

That one book has been nothing short of a phenomenon, winning a clutch of awards, being translated into thirty languages, and selling over twelve million copies. Jung's life is an extraordinary one. As a teenager, she was briefly a member of Chairman Mao's Red Guard. She watched her parents being denounced during the Cultural Revolution, and was herself exiled to live in rural poverty. Then, little more than a decade later, she was studying in Britain and became the first person from the People's Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British university. In writing Wild Swans she was unearthing the truths of her own life and those of her mother and grandmother, which not only brought the suffering of a nation into crystal clear focus, but also in a way set her free. Jung Chang, I say set you free there. Did did you feel a sense of liberation when you wrote Wild Swan?

Jung Chang1:29

Thanks.

Jung Chang1:29

Yes, I did. I first came to Britain in nineteen seventy eight. I mean, right after the end of the Cultural Revolution. I used to have lots of nightmares, and the past was just too painful. My father died in the Cultural Revolution. My grandmother died

Jung Chang1:47

And I saw so many atrocities and violence around me, and I was still living in that world.

Jung Chang1:55

And then ten years later, in nineteen eighty eight, my mother came to visit me, and for the first time she told me the stories of her life and stories of my grandmother. And as a result I wrote Wild Swans.

Jung Chang2:09

And I put, you know, the past to to rest and I was able to live a much happier life. You say you had nightmares. Did the nightmares cease when you started writing?

Jung Chang2:20

Um well, when I was writing Wild Swans, there were still many nightmares because in a way writing Wild Swans brought back some of the past. But w after I finished, um you know, gradually I was able to recover my balance, psychological balance in my heart.

Presenter2:40

You have described the Chinese nation very powerfully as a nation cowed and contorted by fear and indoctrination. I mean, given that you've lived in the UK now for thirty years, how much kinship do you feel with the Chinese still? Anything else?

Jung Chang2:53

At all?

Jung Chang2:53

You know, before I wrote Wild Swans, I just wanted to forget about China. I mean, I actually, when I first came to Britain, I used to tell people I was from South Korea because I didn't want people to ask me questions about the past I wanted to forget. But Wild Swans has brought China back to my heart and to my mind. I mean, if I don't go back every year, if I don't see the Chinese around me, I just feel restless. Tell me about your first piece of music then.

Jung Chang3:27

Oh yes. Well, I first heard this Gregorian chant when I was writing Wild Swans in Italy. We were in the Abbey and there was this music playing.

Jung Chang3:40

And I immediately felt somehow I was transported to another world, and I felt a tremendous sense of elevation and tremendous lightness in my head. And also it reminded me of that period when I was writing the book, you know, so I would never forget it.

Speaker 44:06

Everybody is falling.

Speaker 44:11

This is the

Speaker 44:25

In the heaven.

Presenter4:57

The monks of the Abbey of Notre Dame of Ganagobi singing Kyrie thirteen.

Presenter5:02

So let's start then at the beginning of what has been so far a truly remarkable life. You were born in nineteen fifty two that was three years after Ma came to power into a family that enjoyed some privilege. C give us an understanding of of family life and and the home that you lived in.

Jung Chang5:19

Well, my parents were Communist officials, so I was growing up in this privileged environment of the Communist elite. We lived in this armed compound with chauffeurs, gardeners, cooks, servants.

Jung Chang5:35

I grew up so much taking privilege and hierarchy for granted that when I first came to England I thought England was wonderfully classless. Of course my views have been modified over the years

Presenter5:47

Yes. And and what sort of people were your parents? You say they both worked pretty high up in the Communist Party. What did they do?

Jung Chang5:55

Yeah.

Presenter5:55

My father

Jung Chang5:56

was uh quite high up. I mean, they were really functionaries. I mean they didn't have any power to decide the policies, but they had to carry out the pol whatever policies that was made in Beijing, or basically by Mao. And but my father was looking after, you know, health, um, education, newspapers, and so on. And what sort of person was your mother?

Jung Chang6:21

My mother m was really a a fantastic character. My mother joined the Communists when she was fifteen. And then when the Communists took her city, she met my father and they got married. You know, my mother had a lot of bitterness against my father. When my mother was giving birth to me, doctors said that it was going to be a dangerous birth and m my mother should be transferred to another hospital in another town. And my father was the governor of the region. He said his wife had to be treated like everybody else. So he vetoed it. And so my mother nearly died. And she thought bitterly against my father. She thought, you know, he didn't love me.

Jung Chang7:06

And he didn't care where live or die.

Presenter7:10

Your father clearly had these uncompromising ideals, but

Presenter7:14

Do you think essentially he was an uncaring person? I mean, to to treat the the woman you're supposed to love in that way seems extraordinary.

Jung Chang7:20

Well, he did care for my mother, and he did love my mother, as my mother realised later but he always put his principles before the interest of his family.

Presenter7:31

Your mother was working, as you say, and and your grandmother took a central role in in bringing you up as a a little child. What what sort of person was she?

Jung Chang7:38

Yeah.

Jung Chang7:39

My grandmother was lovely, but she had a very sad life because when she was um two her feet were bound, crushed and bound, you know, foot binding. I remember that, you know, when we went out shopping or something, and when we came back, my grandmother would always have a bowl of hot water and soak her feet into the hot water. And she had this little package of tools, like n nail scissors, that sort of thing. But there were special things for bound feet, because the nails, the toenails, kept growing into the flesh. So that was extremely painful. And my grandmother would sigh and say, you know, you never get over the pain.

Jung Chang8:23

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Jung Chang8:26

Um

Jung Chang8:27

It was a handle. Yes, yeah. It's my all-time favorite. And I also encountered this music soon after I came to Britain.

Presenter8:27

Yeah.

Speaker 48:28

Uh

Presenter8:28

Yes, it's a good idea.

Speaker 48:28

Uh

Jung Chang8:36

I felt my heart was expanding. I mean this music expresses so much of all my feelings, and being brought out and being transformed into something beautiful and memorable.

Speaker 48:51

But thou didst not leave his soul in heaven.

Speaker 48:58

But round it not even soul in hell. What didst thou suffer? What didst thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption?

Jung Chang9:01

Yeah.

Speaker 49:30

Thou didst not

Speaker 49:32

Be soul in hell, thou didst not leave.

Speaker 49:38

Thou didst not leave

Speaker 49:41

Peace so

Presenter9:45

Stuart Burroughs singing Thou Didst Not Leave His Soul in Hell from Handel's Messiah with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karl Richter. You were still quite a young child then when Mao launched this great leap forward. This was the move that was intended to turn China from an agricultural economy into an industrialized economy. Do you have any memories of how that impacted upon you as a little girl?

Jung Chang10:08

Yes, I remember very well. I was six when the Great Leap happened. I encountered many sort of starving people. I myself didn't starve because I was from a privileged background. But our maid, whose family was in the villages,

Jung Chang10:27

Their f her family all died during the famine. And I remember one night our maid's mother visited her to tell her daughter and my family that all her family had died. And soon afterwards Ahmaid's mother herself died. I remember the night when our maid was crying, you know, really her heart out. And my grandmother was sitting in her on her bed in the mosquito net, and she was crying, and she was cursing the Communists who had brought this famine. And that would have been a very rare thing to see somebody openly expressing a view. I'd never seen it. I'd never heard this. I was so shocked. That's why I remembered very vividly now.

Presenter10:59

And that would have been

Jung Chang11:12

And another thing I remembered, of course, you know, Mao needed steel. So he ordered the whole population to take part. You know, I was six then, but my major occupation was somehow to cook steel in the school kitchen. And we had to feed all the nails and the cogs and saucepans, and we had to collect all this to feed into the school kitchen, which was turned into a giant some sort of furnace. But of course nothing like steel came out of these ventures, but the the stoves had to be attended to around the clock, because, you know, the temperature should never drop.

Jung Chang11:52

Uh you were only a teenager then, when

Presenter11:53

When the Cultural Revolution began, um it very much affected you then. What do you remember of those early days of the Cultural Revolution about your life?

Jung Chang12:03

Well, I was 14 when the Cultural Revolution started in 1966, and my life was turned upside down. My father was one of the few who stood up against the Mao and protested against the Cultural Revolution. And as a result, he was arrested, tortured, driven insane, exiled to a camp, and died prematurely.

Presenter12:26

What sort of things happened?

Jung Chang12:27

I have

Presenter12:27

Uh

Jung Chang12:27

Well, for example, both he and my mother were subject to these ghastly denunciation meetings. The victims would be stood on the stage, and their arms would be ferociously twisted to the back, and their heads would be ferociously pushed down, and they would be kicked and beaten and tortured, and then they would be paraded in the streets, and children spat at them and threw stones at them. And my father suffered particularly badly.

Jung Chang12:56

Tell me about your next piece of music, then. What have you chosen?

Jung Chang12:59

Um my next piece of music was from um the Shanghai Opera, uh The Dream of the Red Chamber.

Jung Chang13:07

Now, I heard this piece of music when I was a child, before the Cultural Revolution, when it was still allowed.

Jung Chang13:15

And then after Mao died and the Cultural Revolution was over, after nineteen seventy six, I heard it again, and I was in tears. Um I just thought this was so wonderful, so mm so beautiful.

Presenter13:52

Ah

Presenter13:56

part of the Dream of the Red Chamber, sung by Shu Yulan and Wang Wen Chuan. So, Yung Chang, you sit opposite me to day with this very ornately patterned scarf on, and carved jewelry, and this hair down to your waist, a very elegant figure, obviously taking joy in the beautiful things in life, and yet as a teenager

Presenter14:14

you were forced to have your long plaits cut off and you had to wear trousers and you had to look like every other child. I is the way you look today a sort of conscious effort to enjoy and assert yourself after all those years of not being able to as a teenager?

Jung Chang14:25

After all this

Jung Chang14:28

Well, maybe not uh conscious um because the past obviously has gone. But I did love beautiful things, but I was deprived um of beautiful things and

Presenter14:40

And also encouraged to deprive others of them. I mean, as a child in school, you were told to tear up the lawn and take out the flower beds. Tell us about that.

Jung Chang14:47

Well, you know, that was just so m sad and so absurd. You know, we were suddenly told to get out of the classroom and remove the grass from the school lawn, because Mao said that uh cultivating grass and flowers was a bourgeois habit that had to be get rid of.

Presenter15:07

What were your personal feelings? I don't mean retrospectively, but if you can think back to being a teenager, what did you personally feel towards Chairman Mao at that time?

Jung Chang15:16

At that time I never questioned Mao. Under the indoctrination we must condemn ourselves for any thoughts that went against the Mao's teachings.

Jung Chang15:28

But my faith in Mao did begin to wane when I was fourteen, when the Cultural Revolution started. Before that Mao was like our God.

Presenter15:39

You yourself had started to write when you were sixteen, I believe. You wrote your first poem in nineteen sixty-eight. Can you remember what it was about?

Jung Chang15:47

Yes, I I only remember a vague feeling, which was um a feeling of not knowing what to think. I remember I I sort of used this metaphor, like um autumn leaves being swept from the trees by a gush of wind. But w what is there to hold on to? What should I be thinking? I didn't know. I mean, that was my first decent poem. Um and afterwards I lay in bed again and I was thinking, you know, we were told Communist China was paradise on earth. And I thought if this is paradise, what then is a hell?

Jung Chang16:26

Tell me about your next piece of music then. It's uh

Presenter16:28

The shoe hand.

Jung Chang16:30

Oh, my um next piece of music, um it was uh Chopin's Nocta Dean C Sharp Minor played by Fouton.

Jung Chang16:39

It was one of the first pieces of music I heard when I first came to Britain in nineteen seventy eight.

Jung Chang16:46

And Futung was one of my first friends. He was Chinese and he played Chopin beautifully.

Jung Chang16:53

And I just fell in love with this piece of music. I felt you know, wistful, I felt um sadness, happiness, all at the same time. And I I just felt that it was a heavenly piece of music.

Presenter18:08

Part of Chopin's Nocturn in C sharp minor, played by Futsong, recorded, as he said, in nineteen seventy eight, the very year you yourself came to London to study.

Jung Chang18:10

Okay.

Presenter18:17

What did you expect before you came? Did you know what London looked like?

Jung Chang18:21

I instantly fell in love with it, and on the first occasion I was allowed out not on my own. In those days we were not allowed to go out on our own we had to go out in a group.

Jung Chang18:33

And but we went to the Hyde Park.

Jung Chang18:35

And there, you know, every blade of grass, every petal of flowers, made me mad with joy. You know, I just wanted to hug this land of greenness. I think that piece of Chopin also fitted so well into my mood at the time.

Presenter18:52

Did you know when you arrived and when you fell so deeply in love with London that you would always want to stay here? Did you imagine that you would ever go back?

Jung Chang19:01

Um, I guess in my subconscious that's what I thought. But I didn't tell it because in those days this amounted to defection, you know, a traitor, you would be carted off back to China in a jute sack and drugged. I mean, that was the kind of lived with that fear. Oh, absolutely. I mean, particularly we were told if we violate um the rules. Um when we first came, there were so many rules. We mustn't do this, we mustn't do that. I mean what were the rules? Can you can you run through some of them?

Presenter19:34

Yeah.

Jung Chang19:34

Right, one was not to go out on your own, and one other was not to go into an English pub.

Jung Chang19:41

Because the Chinese translation for pub, jiu ba, suggested somewhere indecent with nude women gyrating.

Jung Chang19:50

And I was torn with curiosity. I bet you were.

Speaker 419:52

I bet you were.

Jung Chang19:54

And uh and so m I knew there was a pub opposite the college I was in. So one day I sneaked out, I darted across the road and I pushed the door of the pub open. Of course I saw nothing of the kind, only some old man sitting there drinking beer. I was disappointed. Yes, I was rather disappointed.

Presenter20:10

Yeah.

Presenter20:15

And at this time I mean, you were in your mid-twenties, you were an adult by this time, but the fear was still deeply rooted inside you that there was a controlling arm and it was never far away.

Jung Chang20:17

But

Jung Chang20:20

Yeah.

Jung Chang20:24

Absolutely, fear had been embedded in my psyche.

Jung Chang20:31

Tell me then about your next piece of music.

Jung Chang20:34

This song is a boatman's song. Boatmen did not live, and still don't live, a comfortable life, because often they had to pull the boat to the shore. And when I was a child I remember seeing those boatmen.

Jung Chang20:50

bending double, almost to the ground, you know, using all their effort to pull the heavy boat. And they would hum a kind of chant, which is very much like the boatman's song, to give them energy and to make life easier for themselves.

Presenter21:35

The Song of the Boatman of the Yellow River, sung by Wang Shan Yung. So, Yung Chang, you shared more than twenty years now with your husband, the historian John Halliday. How did you meet?

Presenter21:47

Uh

Jung Chang21:47

Well, we we met in London. He was uh making a series about the Korean war uh in the early nineteen eighties and I was um working in a ser television series about China, so we were introduced and I was supposed to help him opening doors in China, but of course I did nothing of the sort, I just fell in love.

Presenter22:09

Uh

Presenter22:11

When you were growing up in China, I would imagine it wasn't common to show loving exchanges between people. People were very controlled in their behaviour. Wi would that be would that be right? I mean, between your parents, did you see much touching, much loving affection, many kisses quickly in the kitchen, anything like that?

Jung Chang22:27

And I think

Jung Chang22:29

Oh, no. I remember the first time I saw a man and a woman openly uh hugging each other was in nineteen seventy five, uh, when I was twenty three, and they were foreigners. They they were not not foreigners, they were from Hong Kong.

Presenter22:46

There were There were tourists. But this was the first time in your life, at the age of twenty three, you'd seen a a couple embrace?

Jung Chang22:49

But at the age of twenty three you've seen no

Jung Chang22:51

They weren't they were just and the woman was just leaning her head on the shoulder of the man. Um I learned from growing up in China never to let my guard drop. You know, I was full of armors wrapping around me. So when I saw this couple, you know, openly showing affection, I remember I suddenly felt

Jung Chang23:14

So sad at, you know, at myself not being able to do this and being deprived of this.

Jung Chang23:21

And when I met John, for the first time I felt I could completely trust him. I could show all my feelings to him, and and I I think I was transformed into an another person.

Presenter23:34

So you didn't feel a sort of physical reticence about holding hands with him in public? Or that was that by that time you'd you'd thrown off those shackles.

Jung Chang23:39

So no.

Jung Chang23:40

No. I threw those shackles pretty fast when I came to Britain.

Presenter23:47

So it was nineteen eighty eight then when your mother came to visit you in London, and this was the beginning of the the seeds of wild swans being sown.

Presenter23:56

How did the conversation, which turned into sixty hours of taped material, how did it begin?

Presenter24:03

Yeah.

Jung Chang24:03

Well, it was her first trip outside China, and it was her first opportunity to be outside the social and the political confines of that society. And so my mother wanted to talk to me, so she sat down and started to tell me her life, a lot of things I didn't know, and she stayed with me for six months and um she left me sixty hours of tape recordings. Tell me about your next piece of music.

Jung Chang24:32

Oh, well, I'm I just love Ben Webster. And I was introduced to Ben Webster by John, my husband. And so the music is always associated with our romance, if I may say.

Jung Chang24:46

Um but and also Mao and Mao's regime condemned jazz as particularly bourgeois and decadent. So we never heard the sound of jazz. I just fell in love with it, and Ben Webster in particular.

Speaker 425:51

Yeah.

Presenter26:01

Ben Webster and one for the Governor. A bit of bourgeois decadence there as you described it for your island, Jung. It was during the writing of Wild Swans that you were diagnosed with breast cancer. I wondered maybe if living with the illness whilst you were writing made you

Speaker 426:05

Okay.

Presenter26:15

Even more impassioned about telling the story gave it a sort of sense of urgency at all.

Jung Chang26:21

Um, I I I I guess I didn't think that much. I mean, in fact, um writing wild swans uh help push the thought of um breast cancer to the back of my head. I was much more preoccupied with the writing than with my with this uh unfortunate thing which now fortunately is behind me now, I think completely.

Presenter26:45

huge success of Wild Swans, as I said. It's been translated into thirty languages. It's sold ten million copies. I mean, extraordinary. Now twelve million. It's sold twelve million copies. Well done.

Jung Chang26:48

It's been

Speaker 426:54

It sold 12 million copies. Well done.

Presenter26:58

It is an extraordinary success, but it enabled you to spend ten years of your life with your husband, John, who, as I said, is an historian, researching your next book, which was a book on Mao. Did you feel compelled to tell the story?

Speaker 426:59

Isn't it strong?

Jung Chang26:59

Sure

Speaker 426:59

26

Jung Chang27:00

Uh

Jung Chang27:15

Story

Speaker 427:15

Okay.

Presenter27:16

Uh

Jung Chang27:16

Yes, but I didn't expect the process to be twelve years. But John and I did work very hard for twelve years writing this book. And together we, you know, we traveled around the world and interviewed virtually everyone who had interesting and important dealings with Mao, including George Bush the Senior, Henry Kissinger, the Dalai Lama, Emel the Marcos of the Shu fame, and um Mon Buto, the the tyrant of Zaire, now Congo.

Presenter27:49

You make some very strong claims in the book that part of the long march might not have happened, that battles that Mao was held up as winning were in fact swung in in his favour. There's been criticism, too, as well as praise, from people saying that

Presenter28:03

There's too much of your own feeling, your own family's experience that has swayed the way you have written the book. How would you reply to that?

Jung Chang28:11

Well, our biography is not a bland, bloodless word game. Um there is passion in in our book. Um but this book is also a fair book to Mao. It's a portrayal of Mao's dramatic life.

Presenter28:31

This may be an impossible question, but I wonder, given these two huge and significant books that you have written.

Presenter28:38

If you had to only write one of them, which was the more important one to write? Was it the intimate story of your family, or was it

Presenter28:45

The Great Story of Meyer

Jung Chang28:48

It's a very hard question. And without writing Wild Swans, of course, I couldn't have written Mao. So Wild Swans is very close to my heart. But I think Mao is certainly a more important book, particularly important for the Chinese, because it has rewritten modern Chinese history. I mean, it's banned in mainland China, but it's published in Hong Kong. So people have been saying this is like a atom bomb. Not in the sense of destruction, but in terms of its impact.

Presenter29:21

Talk more about that and about the fact that your books are not published in China in just a moment, but tell me about your seventh piece of music.

Jung Chang29:28

Oh, it's Mozart's coronation mass. And I listened to it many times when I was forced to have lie downs in the afternoons because of my cancer. And it just somehow it made me feel life is

Jung Chang29:46

beautiful, it's worthwhile, and I just wanted to um live and enjoy music like this.

Speaker 429:57

Stop a nice old priest

Speaker 430:00

Yeah.

Speaker 430:11

Yeah.

Speaker 430:24

Please.

Speaker 430:26

It's not a big song.

Speaker 430:43

Another song

Presenter30:53

The Curie from Mozart's Missa Brevis, performed by the Regensburg Cathedral Choir with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Raphael Kobelik. So your books are still banned in China, Yung Chang. How much does that matter to you?

Jung Chang31:07

It matters tremendously. The people who I most wanted to read my books are the Chinese. But unfortunately the Communist Party still has a party line on history, and so they are both banned.

Presenter31:22

But although they are not conventionally available in in shops, people can't buy them, people do read them. How how do they get?

Jung Chang31:28

Hold of them. A lot of people have read them. I'm very pleased. I mean, both books are in Chinese. They are published in Hong Kong, so many copies have gone into China. And also, now we have the Internet. So enthusiasts have scanned the books into the website for other people to download. Is your mother. Uh Still alive? Yes, my mother still lives in China. I mean, she's in poor health, but she's um she's there. What does she make of your extraordinary success?

Jung Chang32:01

Before Wild Swans was published, my mother wrote me a letter. You know my mother's role in writing Wild Swans she was the engine, you know. But she wrote me and said the book might not do well, but you are not to worry. She told me not to worry. She said writing the book, she felt, had brought us closer together, and that was enough for her. I had made her a happy woman.

Presenter32:23

So you have this very, very close relationship with your mother, inevitably, given all the things you went through as a family, and then given the journey that you went on to write the book. And you also in the book exquisitely detail the relationship that you had with your grandmother, who was also very, very important to you. You yourself do not have children. Is that a regret for you?

Jung Chang32:41

It may yes, I mean, maybe if I come to think of it. Um, but it it was made imp possible, you know, by my illness. But, um, you know, I love my husband. He loves me and we worked together. We wrote um Mao together and he helped me with wild swans. And we have these books as the product of our

Jung Chang33:07

love and relationship. Um so I feel I'm extremely fortunate uh woman. I I'm extremely fortunate.

Jung Chang33:15

Tell me about your last piece of music then.

Jung Chang33:18

Oh, Billy Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues. It's absolutely wonderful piece of music. And again, Jong introduced me to Bill Holiday. So I of course I listen to it always with John at the back of my mind. I I feel words fail me when I describe music. And I think Bill Holiday is somebody who just sings for all of us.

Speaker 433:44

Lady sings the blues I'm telling you

Speaker 433:55

She's got'em back.

Speaker 433:59

Well now well

Speaker 434:07

She's never gonna sing with no more.

Presenter34:14

Billy Holiday and Lady Sings the Blues. So I will give you the Bible for this island and the complete works of Shakespeare. You're allowed to take one other book. What will it be?

Jung Chang34:22

Yeah.

Jung Chang34:23

Um I would take Turgenev's first love, because I read it when I was sixteen, when I was exiled to the edge of the Himalayas, and um it lived in my mem

Presenter34:34

Memory. We shall give you that. And a luxury to make life on this island as you are cast away a little more bearable. Snorkeling gear.

Jung Chang34:43

I discovered the snorkeling this year and I just absolutely love it. And I hope in this desert island there are lovely, you know, corals and tropical fishes for me to enjoy.

Presenter34:55

I think there will be. We will give you it. And which of the eight tracks would you like to save if I was to push you to take just one?

Presenter35:02

Handle

Jung Chang35:03

Los Missaire.

Jung Chang35:04

It just says everything about my

Jung Chang35:07

her feelings, and life would be completely livable and happy.

Presenter35:12

With him.

Presenter35:13

Yung Cheng, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you.

Presenter35:24

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Dists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.