Jung Chang
Born 25 March 1952
Jung Chang was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China, in 1952. She was a red guard briefly at the age of fourteen and then worked as a peasant, a 'barefoot doctor', a steelworker, and an electrician before becoming an English language student and, later, an assistant lecturer at Sichuan University. She left China for Britain in 1978 and was subsequently awarded a scholarship by York University, where she obtained a Ph.D. in linguistics in 1982 - the first person from the People's Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British University. Jung Chang lives in London and teaches the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. Her award-winning book, Wild Swans, was published in 1991. With her husband, Jon Halliday, she is also the author of Mao: The Unknown Story (2005, nonfiction). Source
Quotes
“I had always wanted to be a writer as a child but couldn’t spell out this dream to myself because during the Cultural Revolution all writers were condemned. To be a writer was the most dangerous profession. I wrote my first poem aged 16 and destroyed it.”
On how writing was perceived during her childhood and adolescence in “Jung Chang
Quotes from Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0), chosen with AI.
Books by Jung Chang in order
Books by Jung Chang in the order they were published, from Mme Sun Yat-sen (1986) to Fly, Wild Swans (2025).
- 1Mme Sun Yat-sen
Mme Sun Yat-sen1986 - 2Cisnes Salvajes
Cisnes Salvajes1989 - 3Mao Zedong: Xian Wei Ren Zhi De Gu Shi
Mao Zedong: Xian Wei Ren Zhi De Gu Shi2002 - 4Empress Dowager Cixi
Empress Dowager Cixi2013 - 5Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister
Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister2019 - 6Fly, Wild SwansFly, Wild Swans2025