Wild Swans by Jung Chang

I just finished reading the book Wild Swans by Jung Chang.  It is a story about three generations of women living in China when Mao was coming to power, and when Mao was in full power. 

The Grandmother is a concubine to a man in the military, though she lives in her home town in northern China, this man lives in central china with his wife and numerous other concubines.  Not the ideal situation, right?  The mother is born while the grandmother is still "married" to this military man.  Shortly after, the man dies, allowing the grandmother to eventually remarry whomever she wanted.  If you were a divorced woman, you could not remarry.  But if you were a widowed woman it was ok.

The mother grows up in the time when the communists are taking over and Mao is slowly rising to power.  I was just absolutely amazed by everything the Chinese went through during this time.  Civil War was going on, people were going around destroying ancient temples.  The mother met her husband while working for the communists.  Together they traveled to southwestern China so they could work for the "cause" together.  The way the husband treated the mother was astonishing to me.   

The daughter, who is also the author of the book, was born when Mao was in full power.  She grow up in southwestern China with her mother and father, and three siblings.  The book goes into great detail about the relationship between the mother and father, as well as how the siblings were treated.  Imagine sending your children to daycare five days a week, and they slept there.  The children were only allowed to come home on the weekends.  This was the case because the parents were too busy helping the communists, and did not have the time to take care of their children.  When the author was a teenageer, all school children were sent to "camps" in the country to live as the peasants live.  Most of the school children's parents were also sent to the country to be banished for "anti-communist" thinking.  No one was safe.

This book goes into every detail of what it was like growing up under Mao.  I can not believe some of the things these people had to go through.  Poverty and famine only to name a couple of things.  I definitely recommend anyone to read this book, I learned so much about China during the time of Mao.  I was in awe every page about what these people were put through, I couldn't put the book down.  This summary is incredibly long for a summary, though I barely scratch the surface of what detail is conatined in this book.  It is a very heavy book to read, but you learn so much from it.