"Jung Chang vividly evokes China's sights, sounds, and smells to create what must be one of the grimmest, yet most perceptive accounts of growing up middle-class in the maelstrom that has swept China since the 1920s." - Back cover.
A cautionary tale of 3 eventful lifes, during Chinas transition from feudalism to modernity. Misogyny, civil war and occupation in China we're just blank facts for me before this book filled them with living images.
This book left me shocked about the absurdites costing lifes of millions and mesmerized humans ever managed to bring societies to prosper at the current level.
Not being much informed about world history this book leaves me wanting to read Jung Chang's Biography of Mao.
Communism is supposed to get rid of social classes and inequality. The book starts with China ruled by warlords. Strapped for cash, the author's great grandfather sells his daughter, the author's grandmother to one of them as a concubine. These were the kind of abuses that communism was designed to end but ended up perpetuating while still giving lip service to the ideals.
Just because I gave it 5 stars it doesn't mean I don't have to also add what people today are calling a trigger warning. You have to be able to tolerate reading about a lot of people suffering for a long time; unnecessary suffering primarily caused by the cruelty of other human beings. It's a long book, covering events taking place through 3 generations and China has a large population. That makes for a great deal of suffering.
I somehow made it through most of my life …
Communism is supposed to get rid of social classes and inequality. The book starts with China ruled by warlords. Strapped for cash, the author's great grandfather sells his daughter, the author's grandmother to one of them as a concubine. These were the kind of abuses that communism was designed to end but ended up perpetuating while still giving lip service to the ideals.
Just because I gave it 5 stars it doesn't mean I don't have to also add what people today are calling a trigger warning. You have to be able to tolerate reading about a lot of people suffering for a long time; unnecessary suffering primarily caused by the cruelty of other human beings. It's a long book, covering events taking place through 3 generations and China has a large population. That makes for a great deal of suffering.
I somehow made it through most of my life knowing next to nothing about China. There is a long list of countries I know nothing about and that probably makes me a typical American. Also, typically, I didn't miss this knowledge. I, rather than a repressive leader, stood in the way of this knowledge.
It's easy to point out the failings of America, especially under a Trump presidency, but reading this book makes the failings of the current political situation here seem almost trivial in comparison. Trump has a personality like Mao. A need to be worshiped, an imperiousness while claiming values he doesn't actually hold, an anti-intellectualism, a talent for bringing out the worst in others. He stirs up the "peasants" but makes their life worse, yet they don't seem to notice. He's not really interested in the fate of the country--only his own. However he lacks Mao's power. The American government isn't a dictatorship yet.
As the Chinese people are forced to make hard choices in impossible situations, Jung Chang's insight is that which side someone is on, or to which category they are said to belong is a poor guide to evaluating them. Instead look for who is compassionate and who is not.
