Soft spoken, sanguine and scholarly, Jung Chang never expected the term 'scandalous' to be applied to her. Her books are blackened and banned in China and yet she remains one of the most respected and successful Asian authors in the world. P.Ramakrishnan meets the writer, as translated works of her controversial book, Mao, The Unknown Story (originally released in 2005), hit book stores this year. Images courtesy of Connoisseur Art Gallery, Wellington Gallery, The Andy Warhol Foundation for th Visua Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Portrait of Jung Chang by Makoto Kuwata.
Officially, Jung Chang's mighty tome, Mao, The Unknown Story (released in 2005 by Vintage books), which she co-wrote with her husband Jon Halliday, is forbidden in China, as was her last book, the biographical Wild Swans which remarked on the great famine in China that devastated her own, and millions of other families, in the early 1960s. Having sold over 10 million copies since its release in 1992, Wild Swans remains one of the best selling non-fiction books of all time. The follow-up had readers waiting for a decade, as the formidable husband and wife literary duo teamed up to write the definitive book on the political giant, the Marxist military writer and leader of China, Mao Tse-Tung (1893-1976).
So wary is the Chinese regime of Jung Chang, 54, that the red tape extends to reviews, interviews and even a picture of her encroaching its way into newsstands across the continent; the distribution of The Far Eastern Economic Review, The Economist, and Dow Jones were all blocked by the government when they featured articles on her. It was little surprise that a quarter of the world's population would not be granted permission to read her writing, by administrative decree.
"Surprised that they banned my book? Me? Of course not!" says Chang with a succinct, omniscient laugh. "I did worry at first, and I can see that my worries were not unfounded, as I thought that the book might never see the light of day in China. Officially. But the opposite is true. When I was last in Hong Kong, I saw people buying it in the airport as they boarded flights to China. I'm very glad about the way things have turned out, it's most reassuring. Not only the English edition on sale but the Chinese version, published a few months ago in Hong Kong, sells well. I was there for its release and when I spoke about it, the Chinese press were all there and they covered the event, interviewed me, and more importantly, it was published too without a black marker crossing anything out. I've been told the translated version of Mao is selling extremely well in Hong Kong and I know it will permeate China."
And so it has. According to Asiaweek, Mao is the best selling book of the year, second only to the Harry Potter series. A brick sized biography that details Mao Tse-Tung's life in great depth, with historical data, figures, maps and rare vintage photographs, writer Frank Johnson called it "the first great political biography of the twenty-first century." TIME magazine simply said it was "an atom bomb of a book."
Explosive in content for demystifying the erstwhile leader of the world's most populated country, the book sets out to correct myths and historical inaccuracies long propagated as truth. The portrait, like the one on the cover of the book, is none too pleasant. It is easy to assume that the writing is an act of revenge, a verbal strike on the man who was responsible for her shattered family, but the author strongly refutes this.
"I wouldn't say revenge was ever in my mind. When I started writing this, it was a journey of discovery. I don't like the emotion of revenge and hatred. I have seen it consume people's lives and that wasn't for me - despite what happened in my past."
Chang was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China. She was a Red Guard briefly at the age of 14 and then worked as a peasant, doing a series of menial jobs before becoming an English language student. The studious type (which came in handy much later in life while she researched Mao), she went on to become an assistant lecturer at Sichuan University. In 1978, she left for the UK, having been awarded a scholarship by York University, where she obtained a PHD in linguistics in 1982. Her award winning book, Wild Swans, was published in 1991 and was subsequently banned in China for her recollection of the great famine brought on under the regime of Mao. As she clearly indicates in multiple chapters, vast number of deaths were brought on deliberately because of Mao's political and economic folly - where he chose to trade grain with other countries, despite the starvation of his own people.
"I lived through his rule, and my own father was in prison, tortured and driven insane. Why? Because he questioned Mao," reflects Jung in a narrator's tone, devoid of emotion as she simply states the facts of her life. "I was brought up in an environment of fear. When I was a child, Mao was like a god, and in school we said things like 'I swear to Chairman Mao, that I will work hard.' There was no alternative information. China was sealed off, and anything irreverent to Mao was burned."
"Of course there is nothing wrong with revenge on paper, there are plenty of people doing that, those who suffered. Why shouldn't they manifest revenge in their own way" she says, addressing critics that have charged that she wrote out off ill will towards a man who greatly affected her life. "But I've noticed that such writing becomes bland, bloodless, colourless. Our book is charged with passion, there has to be a greater sense of purpose than revenge when you're writing about a man who was responsible for the death of 70 million of his own people during peace time. When I think of what they went through I can't help myself from writing passionately, but it does not stem from something as simple as hate."
It's hard to say if it is love and devotion for the man that has kept Mao's looming portrait and his corpse in Tienanmen Square, in the heart of the capital city of Beijing, by a nation still fascinated by this iconic world figure who died 30 years ago. In effect, did the book ban pique people's curiosity? Did they want it more because it was forbidden? "There might be some element of that, but not entirely,"says Chang, fully aware of the great diaspora still intrigued by Chinese history and its iconic figures.
"People are interested in history, the Chinese revere their history and our culture is all about knowing our past. I have not personally met any Mainland or Hong Kong politicians to gauge their responses, but I've heard from valuable sources that those who are most interested in our book are Communist officials who lived under Mao. Particularly them because that period is very much still on their minds, and perhaps the book answers questions about what they themselves didn't know."
And it's the lack of awareness perhaps that makes Mao a figure less reviled than other political despots of the past. You won't find Y-shirts bearing portraits of those other controversial leaders on sale, but sketches of the Chinese dictator emblazoned on sweatshirts sure seem to sell well in various continents. "In the West, I think people have long harboured this illusion about Mao, mainly because they simply don't know what his rule was like. It's hard for them to imagine because they hardly knew anything of China, let alone its politics and politicians. Mao was very much a propagandist of himself. He skillfully created his own personality cult and allure abroad. This was extremely well executed to Edgar Snow (who wrote Red Star Over China, a flattering account of Mao) or Nixon and Kissinger in the 1970s when they met him."
"He rarely manufactured the attraction of himself within China but abroad he certainly cultivated an image of himself as a great economist, leader, and an avuncular figure to the Chinese people," cites Jung. "So no, I'm not surprised that the West's perception of him is off colour."
Not unlike Andy Warhol's Mao prints in multiple hues, a tribute he otherwise conferred to Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Onassis and other celebrities of the 70s.
"I hope this book dispels the illusions of 'The Great Leader' (she says with sardonic emphasis) not only in China, but the world over."
When CNN interviewed Jung prior to the book's release, the network asked why she chose to write nothing about his achievements, failing to mention either the economic development that occurred following his rise, or his popularity with the common masses - a figure in the billions. "That's one of the grand myths surrounding him - that he was charming or had an authentic following or a spontaneous burst of leadership - but in fact, Mao had trouble recruiting even Communists to his brand of Communism," explains Jung, having well documented his rise to the top in the book.
"He didn't build his own power base through charisma or inspiration, he built it through terror and it was a studied process. We had to write entire chapters on this to understand how he, with neither any charm or clout, went racing up the power ladder. He built power bases and the Chinese people had no choice but to follow him as the ramifications of not doing so were horrific. He destroyed not just people, but their entire families. From root to tree, all perished. You faced beating, execution, families were outcast, and the discrimination and suffering went on for generations if anything was regarded offensive to Mao."
The relevance to the past atrocities she sees as being repeated today by yet another self-titled 'great leader' Kim Jong Il. "If you look at the early days of China and North Korea now, it's almost identical. Or if you look at Saddam Hussein's Iraq, with the statues and endless portraits, the adulation, creating this mythology of being loved by the people... I think all tyrants over the last few decades acquired it from Mao."
One of many parallels Jung found among recent Communist leaders and dictators was their proclivity to swimming - in front of cameras well documenting the act. "I'm almost certain that Mao set the blueprint for this act of swimming to reflect the status of power. Mao loved swimming in his childhood and he was very good. It was a symbol to make a political point, showcasing his physical strength and the battle against the wind and the tides of the Yangtze River. He was making waves to send messages to his opponents and to the population if they ever questioned his age, power of virility. You know how the Chinese love symbolism."
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