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 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “‘Going Through the Five Mountain Passes’: My Mother’s Long March (1949-1950)”
On July 27, 1949, Chang’s mother and father left Jinzhou by train. They disembarked at Tianjin, approximately 250 miles to the southwest, and then continued on foot, over difficult terrain and, with the civil war still raging, under dangerous conditions. In September they finally reached the city of Nanjing, the former Kuomintang capital, 700 miles south of Jinzhou.
At Nanjing, Chang’s mother suffered a miscarriage. On October 1, while she was still recovering in the hospital, she heard the radio broadcast of Mao Zedong declaring the birth of the People’s Republic of China. Chang relates that her mother “cried like a child” at this joyous news (137). Two days later, Chang’s father left Nanjing for his hometown of Yibin. Her mother stayed behind for two months to recuperate. In late December she boarded a steamer and headed west along the great Yangtze River. After 200 miles of traveling only at night, surviving periodic skirmishes with Kuomintang holdouts, and twice switching to smaller boats, she finally reunited with her husband in Yibin in January 1950.
Chapter 8 Summary: “‘Returning Home Robed in Embroidered Silk’: To Family and Bandits (1949-1951)”
Chang’s father had left Yibin in 1940. Now he came back as a victorious hero. He was, according to an old Chinese saying, “returning home robed in embroidered silk” (144). He was also the highest-ranking administrator in a county of more than one million people. Best of all, he got to see his mother and sisters again, all of whom beamed with pride. When she finally caught up to her husband after her long journey from Nanjing, Chang’s mother was made to feel at home among her new in-laws. She was given a job in the county government, but she spent most of her time searching for food outside the city to help feed the people of Yibin. These foraging expeditions proved dangerous, for the Communists had only recently taken the city. Kuomintang soldiers and the landlords who supported them still operated in the Sichuan countryside as did ordinary bandits.
On November 8, 1950, Chang’s sister Xiao-hong was born. Still bitter toward her husband, and reeling from the stress of the past year, Chang’s deeply depressed mother took a while to recover from the birth. When she finally did recover, she began working in the Communist Youth League, which fell under the city’s Department of Public Affairs, headed by a woman named Zhang Xi-ting, whose presence in Chang’s parents’ life would prove to be a destructive one. For the time being, though, things were improving. By the spring of 1951, at the age of 19, Chang’s mother had been promoted to head of the Communist Youth League.
Chapter 9 Summary: “‘When a Man Gets Power, Even His Chickens and Dogs Rise to Heaven’: Living with an Incorruptible Man (1951-1953)”
Chang’s mother initially liked her new boss, Mrs. Ting, who seemed more willing to bend the rules than were other highly-placed Communists. Mrs. Ting also helped Chang’s mother to secure full Party membership. This meant that Chang’s grandmother and her husband could join their daughter and her growing family in Yibin. On March 25, 1952, Jung Chang was born. The author’s given name, Er-Hong, means “Second Wild Swan” (171).
The author’s birth came during a period of relative happiness for her mother, but that happiness did not come without bouts of frustration and even anguish. Four days after Chang’s birth, Dr. Xia died. Chang’s grandmother wanted an elaborate, traditional, Buddhist funeral, but Chang’s father, citing the Party’s objections to “extravagant ceremony,” refused (171). Outraged, Chang’s grandmother suffered a nervous breakdown. This was not the first time Chang’s father’s scrupulous adherence to Communist dogma and practice caused someone in his family to suffer, and it would not be the last. He developed a reputation for incorruptibility that endured for decades in his hometown. During these years, 1951-52, the Party launched parallel anti-corruption initiatives, the “Three Antis Campaign” and the “Five Antis Campaign,” the first of which sought to root out corrupt Party members, and the second of which targeted capitalists outside the Party (176-77).
On May 23, 1953, Chang’s brother Jin-ming was born. By then, Chang’s father had been promoted to governor of the entire Yibin region. One day, when he was alone at home, Mrs. Ting appeared and attempted to seduce him. He rejected her. Within days, he made up his mind to move his entire family out of Yibin. Unbeknownst to Chang’s mother, Mrs. Ting had developed a reputation as a petty and vindictive woman. In higher circles of officialdom, such as that in which Chang’s father operated, it was well known that Mrs. Ting would use her power to settle scores, and she was now jilted. Rather than stay and subject his family to whatever retribution Mrs. Ting could conjure, Chang’s father took a lesser job as head of the Arts and Education Office in the city of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
The conflict between politics and family plagued Chang’s father for most of his life, and he would come to regret giving precedence to the former. For Chang’s mother, the journey to Yibin merely increased her resentment of her husband. As a high official who had earned his revolutionary stripes at Yan’an and elsewhere, he was entitled to a jeep and a bodyguard, but he would not allow his wife to ride with him. To do so, he argued, would be to replicate the favoritism and outright nepotism that had characterized Chinese officialdom for centuries, and the Communist revolution was supposed to change things for the better. Chang’s mother did not like corruption either, and she was proving herself dedicated to the Communist cause, but she struggled to equate tenderness and occasional acts of sympathy with nepotism. After her miscarriage, her resentment against her husband reached its zenith and, on her hospital bed, she asked for a divorce. Chang says that her father “apologized profusely,” “promised to be much more considerate in the future,” and “said he loved her and would reform” (136-37).
Notwithstanding his apologies, promises, and assurances, Chang’s father repeatedly chose his principles and his Party over his wife. In May 1950, Chang’s grandmother arrived in Yibin. Her daughter was pregnant again and therefore thrilled to see her mother. Chang’s father, however, resented his mother-in-law’s sudden appearance. For one thing, she had never accepted him as worthy of her daughter. More importantly, his complete submission to the Party meant that his mother-in-law could not stay in Yibin. It was against Party rules for lesser officials like Chang’s mother to have their parents stay with them. Chang says that the Party did not want its revolutionaries to fall back into “bourgeois” habits and be “pampered” (154). Chang’s mother was understandably furious with her husband for once again placing the Party above her happiness, but he would not bend the rules for his own family. His mother-in-law had to leave, and she did.
Allowing his wife to endure the grueling journey to Yibin and then evicting his mother-in-law might have been heartless acts, and they certainly seemed that way to Chang’s mother, but they also had a strong historical justification. For centuries, from the ancient Mandarins to the Kuomintang, Chinese officials had a well-earned reputation for corruption and nepotism. The Communist Revolution was supposed to make things different, or so Chang’s father sincerely believed. He turned out to be wrong about the Communists, but he never abandoned his anti-corruption principles. Zhang Xi-ting represented the sort of official whom Chang’s father loathed: the kind who would exploit political power for personal benefit.
