Jung Chang is a Chinese-born British writer that is known for her award-winning book, Wild Swans. After having several jobs at a young age, Jung Chang became an English-language student, and an assistant lecturer at Sichuan University. In 1978, Chang left China for Britain, where the University of York awarded her a scholarship. At the university, she acquired a Ph.D. in linguistics in 1982. Interestingly, Chang was the first person from the People’s Republic of China to obtain a doctorate from a British university. Jung Chang’s husband, Jon Halliday, is the collaborating author of the biography. He is an Irish historian that focuses on the history of modern Asia. Halliday was a former Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College, University of London. He had written, and edited his eight previous books. Currently, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday reside in Notting Hill, West London.
The biography focused on Mao Zedong, who was China’s revolutionary, yet erratic leader. The authors portrayed Mao Zedong as a merciless leader that was behind countless committed crimes in China. Under his rule, many people referred to him as Chairman Mao. The chairman left an enormous impact on the modern day China. However, Mao’s immoral philosophy, and hunger for absolute power led to a corrupted government under his rule. The brutality committed by Mao Zedong was heavily emphasized throughout the biography.
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday depicted Mao Zedong’s influence on modern China as the worst role model to follow. Based on the evidence, the authors presented the chairman’s involvement in breaking many human rights. One of the events was when Chairman Mao forced most of China’s population into labor. As it was stated in the biography, “Close...
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...ourageous to include Mao’s assassinations and maltreatment of people. Based on the crimes, I noted that Chairman Mao feared defeat because killing his targets would lead him closer to control over China. The authors had lots of evidence to support, which made me feel part of this cruel story. Also, the background details made some stories extremely exaggerated.
The biography of Mao Zedong was somewhat a success and failure. The book sometimes felt like a textbook since it talked specifically a lot about a particular event. However, the authors provided lots of stories atbout Mao’s achievements and failures. I would recommend the biography to those that are interested in learning about the beginnings of People’s Republic of China, and the mastermind behind all the crimes.
Works Cited
Chang J. and Halliday J. Mao: The Unknown Story. New York: Knopf, 2005. Print.
After a basketball game, four kids, Andrew Jackson, Tyrone Mills, Robert Washington and B.J. Carson, celebrate a win by going out drinking and driving. Andrew lost control of his car and crashed into a retaining wall on I-75. Andy, Tyrone, and B.J. escaped from the four-door Chevy right after the accident. Teen basketball star and Hazelwood high team captain was sitting in the passenger's side with his feet on the dashboard. When the crash happened, his feet went through the windshield and he was unable to escape. The gas tank then exploded and burned Robbie to death while the three unharmed kids tried to save him.
The story “The Execution of Mayor Yin” takes a perilous look at the dark side of the events that happened during the Cultural Revolution. Chairman Mao’s Red Guards were tasked with a cultural cleansing that left many people more confused at the roles they played in society than it reinforced the social class structure. The story tells of a young member of the Red Guard and the personal conflict he suffered during the cleansing of Hsingan, which lay to rest his uncle and possibly even a good friend. The torment the people suffered and the personal struggle Hsaio Wu battled with coincide strongly with the age old question, “Are humans inherently evil?”
After millions of years under imperial rule in China, nationalist rebellions made the government unstable eventually making way for communist ideas. For over twenty years the nationalist struggled to keep democratic power in the country. The Xinhai revolution was a civil war between the nationalists and the communists. The Communists were led by Mao Zedong and they emerged victoriously. In September 1949, two good things happened. It was the celebration of the communist victory and the unveiling of the communist regime that would subsequently rule over China. Mao and his communist supporters had been fighting against a corrupt and abandoned Nationalist government in China. Mao denounced that those who opposed the communist government are imperialistic and domestic reactionaries. Mao also declared that communi...
Dao, Bei. “Notes from the City of the Sun.” One World of Literature. Ed. Lim, Shirley G., and Spencer, Norman A. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. 231-233. Print.
During the Cultural Revolution Mao Zedong , people also knew him as Mao Zedong Tse tung was the Chinese ruler. He ruled the country during this time known as Chairman of the Communist Party of China. Moa was very well educated in Western and Chinese traditions. During the year 1918 Mao Zedong had a job as a librarian assistant at Peking University. He would call himself a Marxist in the of 1920 and he helped found the current Chinese Communist party Communist formed an alliance during 1923 with a man called Sun Ya sen and his Nationalist party. After that Mao Zedong quit the current job he had as a teacher to become a poli...
Jonathan Spence tells his readers of how Mao Zedong was a remarkable man to say the very least. He grew up a poor farm boy from a small rural town in Shaoshan, China. Mao was originally fated to be a farmer just as his father was. It was by chance that his young wife passed away and he was permitted to continue his education which he valued so greatly. Mao matured in a China that was undergoing a threat from foreign businesses and an unruly class of young people who wanted modernization. Throughout his school years and beyond Mao watched as the nation he lived in continued to change with the immense number of youth who began to westernize. Yet in classes he learned classical Chinese literature, poems, and history. Mao also attained a thorough knowledge of the modern and Western world. This great struggle between modern and classical Chinese is what can be attributed to most of the unrest in China during this time period. His education, determination and infectious personalit...
Ji-Li Jiang was not the only citizen deceived by the Communist Party and Chairman Mao. Once most Nationalists, dissidents of Communism, immigrated to Taiwan in 1949, the only people remaining in China were Communist; thus, the common people supported Chairman Mao. He took advantage of the people’s trust and manipulated the entire country. In the hope of spreading enthusiasm about Communism, Chairman Mao used propaganda wisely. New and modern technologies were conducive to the development of Chairman Mao’s personality cult, a group of supporters that follow him for his personality rather than his ideas. Through secular religion, the abolishing of all faiths, Chairman Mao replaced God, Allah, or any other deities with himself. Seeing that religion was the central force in everyone’s life, Chairman Mao was worshiped throughout the nation. The Chinese citizens’ devotion towards Chairman Mao was so great that despite being prosecuted and humiliated themselves, "[they] believed that the Cultural Revolution was necessary to prevent revisionism and capitalism from taking over China… [For instance, when questioned whether or not she hated Chairman Mao, An Yi’s mother replied] ‘if the country was better for the movement
Jung Chang, who wrote Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China was the first of her 3 generations to be raised under the Communist regime. Her parents worked for the Communist party and throughout her childhood she had to follow a set of rules that forced her respect orders under Mao’s rule. Like most Chinese people, she indeed followed Mao’s words and perspective, but in the end she knew that it was Mao that was responsible for China’s suffering. Her views are very biased because she hated Communists, and primarily wrote about the bad that Communism brought to China. She watched her family suffer for years, hating the Communist regime.
He’s very patriotic. He worked for the CIA and specialized in assassination. The tight relationship that the narrator, Bon and Man,a mutual friend, have been put to test. Bon didn’t know that the other two were communists. The narrator and Bon even shared a room together in California. Before leaving Vietnam, his family was killed. This left him very depressed. The first sign of happiness that he have shown since then was when he assisted with the assassination of the major who was a suspected communist. It seem that the author was trying to convey the boiling point of hatred that a significant amount of American felt about communist the Vietnam War era. Bon have even immediately volunteered in the general’s plan to go back to Vietnam to fight the communists. The surprising turn of event was that at the end of the book he was let go even after all the crimes he have committed. Man was able to buy his
There is no better way to learn about China's communist revolution than to live it through the eyes of an innocent child whose experiences were based on the author's first-hand experience. Readers learn how every aspect of an individual's life was changed, mostly for the worst during this time. You will also learn why and how Chairman Mao launched the revolution initially, to maintain the communist system he worked hard to create in the 1950's. As the story of Ling unfolded, I realized how it boiled down to people's struggle for existence and survival during Mao's reign, and how lucky we are to have freedom and justice in the United States; values no one should ever take for
Dressed in the drab military uniform that symbolized the revolutionary government of Communist China, Mao Zedong's body still looked powerful, like an giant rock in a gushing river. An enormous red flag draped his coffin, like a red sail unfurled on a Chinese junk, illustrating the dualism of traditional China and the present Communist China that typified Mao. 1 A river of people flowed past while he lay in state during the second week of September 1976. Workers, peasants, soldiers and students, united in grief; brought together by Mao, the helmsman of modern China. 2 He had assembled a revolutionary government using traditional Chinese ideals of filial piety, harmony, and order. Mao's cult of personality, party purges, and political policies reflect Mao's esteem of these traditional Chinese ideals and history.
“Wild Geese” is very different from many poems written. Oliver’s personal life, the free form of the poem along with the first line, “You do not have to be good,” and the imagery of nature contributes to Oliver’s intent to convince the audience that to be part of the world, a person does not need to aspire to civilization’s standards.
...ng the time of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, mayhem was a part of everyday life. Mao Zedong encouraged rebellious actions from the Red Guards, and rewarded those who shone as leaders. He also targeted his political rivals by provoking the Red Guards to follow his ideas, and annihilate all remnants of china?s old culture. After the revolution ended, the Red guards received the disciplinary actions they deserved, and the tortured victims finally inadvertently received the vengeance they deserved.
It can also be argued that the political activities of Chairman Mao’s Communist China were more of a continuation of traditional Imperial China, based heavily in Confucian values, than a new type of Marxist-Leninist China, based on the Soviet Union as an archetype. While it is unquestionable that a Marxist-Leninist political structure was present in China during this time, Confucian values remained to be reinforced through rituals and were a fundamental part of the Chinese Communist ...
Mao resigned as president of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) in April 1959 , after the Great Leap Forward, planning for Chinese production to “overtake Britain in 15 years”, failed and caused a widespread famine in China, where 20-30 million people starved. President Liu and General Secretary Deng began to restore China , while Mao remained ceremonial head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Liu and Deng introduced many liberal and effective policies , which involved stepping back from communist ideals. Collectivisation and communal cafeterias were abandoned and peasants recommenced private, “capitalist” farming. They even rehabi...