61 pages • 2 hours read
Jung ChangWild Swans: Three Daughters of China
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1991A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 19-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary: “‘Where There Is a Will to Condemn, There Is Evidence’: My Parents Tormented (December 1966-1967)”
Life in Chengdu turned even uglier for Chang’s parents, who were now being denounced as capitalist-roaders. Red Guard “Rebels” took the lead in organizing denunciation meetings against higher-ranking officials inside their departments. It was the workplace equivalent of what students had done to their teachers at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. A “January storm” came in early 1967. Mao’s most powerful opponents—Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, and Tao Zhu—were detained. Rebels took control in the city of Shanghai, and Mao encouraged people everywhere to rise against the capitalist-roaders. In Sichuan Province, the Rebels split into two factions: “26 August,” which took its name from the earlier meeting at which university students denounced Chang’s father, and “Red Chengdu,” which was comparatively moderate (335-36).
Chang’s grandmother collapsed in grief when she learned that mobs had turned against her daughter, who several times was humiliated, made to kneel for long periods, and physically assaulted. Then, a militant group of 26 August Rebels invaded the Changs’ apartment, stole Chang’s father’s book collection, and burned it the next day at a denunciation meeting he was ordered to attend. When she arrived home later that day, Chang for the first time in her life saw her father weeping. She says that he fell into “fits of violent sobs,” and she “could tell that something had happened to his mind” (339). Still, her father stood up to the Rebels. From then on, at denunciation meetings, he refused to kneel even when physically beaten. Rebels raged at him: “The Cultural Revolution is led by Chairman Mao! How dare you oppose it?” He thundered back: “I do oppose it, even if it is led by Chairman Mao!” (340) The mob was stunned, and all went quiet, but the beatings continued.
Home was like a prison. There was no relief to be found because none existed—books, flowers, teahouses, all had been swept away in the Cultural Revolution’s torrent of destruction. With no options and nothing to do, Chang’s father decided to write another letter to Chairman Mao pleading for a return to sanity. Others felt the same way. The Central Military Committee in Peking, a group of senior army officials, tried to stop the madness, but Mao succeeded in turning mob rage against even these powerful men. From then on, the Communist Party structure collapsed, the Cultural Revolution Authority effectively became the governing instrument for the nation, and the provinces fell under the control of Maoist Revolutionary Committees. Sichuan’s new Revolutionary Committee included the two Tings, Jie-ting and his wife, Zhang Xi-ting, the woman who had attempted to seduce Chang’s father in Yibin nearly 15 years earlier. In March 1967 the Tings went together to the Changs’ apartment to recruit Chang’s father into the new Revolutionary regime. It would have meant protection from the mobs and a chance to rise again, but he refused. Instead, he mailed his letter to Chairman Mao.
Chapter 20 Summary: “‘I Will Not Sell My Soul’: My Father Arrested (1967-1968)”
Three days after mailing the letter to Mao, Chang’s father was detained by Rebels. Once again, her mother went to Peking to plead for his release. There she met a young couple, Yan and Yong, Red Chengdu Rebels who proved both helpful and kind. Yan and Yong allowed Chang’s mother to accompany them to a prearranged meeting with Premier Zhou Enlai, a reputed moderate. Premier Zhou heard the plea and wrote instructions for her husband’s release. Yan and Yong accompanied Chang’s mother back to Chengdu and had dinner with the family; Chang instantly liked the pair. Chang’s mother took Zhou Enlai’s instructions to a former colleague, who apparently showed it to the Tings. In April, Chang’s father returned home, but the ordeal had destroyed his mental health. He grew paranoid. Meanwhile, the Rebels created wall posters denouncing Chang’s father by name and featuring an angry quotation from Mme. Mao herself, who had heard a report of his challenge to Mao, most likely through the Tings. Chang’s father began to look distant and numb. He flew into random fits of rage and even physically attacked Chang’s mother, who, for her safety, was forced to move out of the apartment. With help from Yan and Yong, Chang’s mother got her husband admitted to the psychiatric hospital at Sichuan Medical College, which was controlled by Red Chengdu. There he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and treated, and he eventually improved.
In the summer of 1967, Rebel factions engaged in armed combat across Sichuan Province. Red Chengdu tried to recruit Chang’s father to their side, but he wanted no part of anything having to do with the Cultural Revolution, including the factional strife it caused. Some Red Chengdu Rebels denounced him for his apparent ingratitude, but Yan and Yong recognized his conviction and defended him from their comrades, though without the full support of Red Chengdu, they could no longer protect him. The Tings now unleashed 26 August on Chang’s father. The beatings were designed to break him and compel him to join them, but he stood firm, saying, “I will not sell my soul” (368). Chang’s mother also fell victim to the Tings and their minions. From 1967 to 1969, Chang’s mother was forced to attend denunciation meetings and kept in detention most of the time. Her children were not permitted to see her. In 1968, when her mother was imprisoned in an old movie theater, Chang herself went to the theater to deliver a food package, as she had done several times in the past, only this time she was told without explanation that no more deliveries could be accepted. Chang’s grandmother fainted at the news, fearing that her daughter was dead.
Chapter 21 Summary: “‘Giving Charcoal and Snow’: My Siblings and My Friends (1967-1968)”
In 1967-68, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, economic conditions in China deteriorated. Schools were still closed to everything except revolutionary activities. For young people, there was nowhere to go and nothing to do besides cause trouble. In these conditions, Chang’s love for her mother and father developed, she says, “an intensity that could not have existed under normal circumstances” (375). When she was not looking after her parents, Chang relied on friends, including one of the girls from her 1966 pilgrimage to Peking, to help her get through the harsh times. Among acquaintances and their families, suicides were commonplace. With their parents detained, Chang’s family was forced to move out of their apartment. In her solitude, Chang took to writing poetry. Her resourceful brother Jin-ming discovered a black market in books, which, as often as possible, he clandestinely passed along to his sister. Her second brother, 12-year-old Xiao-hei, joined a gang.
Meanwhile, Chairman Mao ordered a “Clean Up the Class Ranks” campaign (384). Rebels turned on each other. On June 2, 1968, the regime’s new leaders formally established the Sichuan Provincial Revolutionary Committee, which included the two Tings. Accused capitalist-roaders like Chang’s parents had their incomes slashed. For the second time in less than a year, the family had to move its residence. They were sent out of the compound altogether and into a three-story house, where they occupied a few rooms on the top floor. “Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Teams” invaded the schools and forced the students to perform “loyalty dances” (390). Notwithstanding the absence of actual instruction, all university students “graduated” in 1968 and were sent to “jobs” in different parts of China, often at the Revolutionary Committees’ discretion (391). Yan, the Red Chungdu Rebel who had helped Chang’s parents, was banished to a coal mine.
Chapters 19-21 Analysis
The extraordinary events of early 1967 reveal the swiftness with which Mao achieved victory over his rivals, which was, after all, the purpose of the Cultural Revolution. On her earlier pilgrimage to Peking, Chang had seen President Liu Shaoqi riding in Mao’s motorcade. She said Liu looked “subdued and weary” and, in hindsight, she concludes that he “must have felt how utterly hopeless his situation was” (329). Now, a few months later, Liu was among the former officials detained by Mao’s loyalists. Everything now ran through the Cultural Revolution Authority, headed by Mao’s wife. Chang writes that Mao’s organization “was like a medieval court, structured around wives, cousins, and fawning courtiers” (344). Natural tyrants also recognize themselves in others, which is why, when she met the two Tings, Mme. Mao immediately saw them as “kindred spirits” and had them appointed to the Sichuan Revolutionary Committee (346). All this transpired, from the purges to the Revolutionary Committees, in a matter of months.
Meanwhile, the splitting of Rebels into factions was unsurprising and even predictable. Mao’s orders called on people to “destroy” and “seize power”—what and from whom made little difference. No matter their ideological bent, the degree of indoctrination they had suffered, or their ultimate motives, anyone who felt inclined to cause mischief could claim to be acting under Mao’s mandate. Like Yan and Yong, some people who joined Rebel groups were fundamentally decent and believed that they were doing right. Others, however, such as the Ting-backed 26 August group, consisted primarily of troublemakers.
Chang’s father—another fundamentally decent person—came under unimaginable torment, and the strain nearly broke him. He was a man of genuine principle who refused to sell his soul, either to the Red Chengdu faction that had helped him or to the Tings. In truth, however, he had sold his soul long ago when he surrendered his being to the Communist Party. He knew that his children and especially his wife would be pressured to disown him. The Communist Party was relentless in its subversion of families. Chang’s father also knew that he had helped enable that relentlessness, endorsed it, and even participated in it. The fact that his family stood by him, that he found love and comfort from them alone, when everyone else in the world seemed to have abandoned him, must have intensified his feelings of guilt.
