![]() ![]() For the gargantuan Mao: The Unknown Story, she and her co-author, husband Jon Halliday, conducted hundreds of interviews in China that put her at risk of deportation. Since then Chang has written fearless books that offer challenges to received wisdom about some of the most important Chinese figures. ![]() It became the most successful work of nonfiction ever published. Sisters Soong Ei-ling (1888-1973), Soong Ching-ling (1893-1981) and Soong May-ling (1897-2003) came to be known disparagingly as the “Soong Dynasty”, and their lives, triumphs, relationships, and hardships were so entangled with every twist of modern Chinese history as to tell its story.Ĭhang moved from China to the UK in 1978, and in 1992 published the international sensation Wild Swans about three generations of women in her family during specific moments of political upheaval. For almost a century after the fall of the monarchy there was one family who was close to power, and they exerted it from both Nationalist and Communist sides of the political divide. “From my experience of dealing with historical figures,” the bestselling historian and author Jung Chang tells me in the London offices of her publisher, “the facts are often surprising, even counterintuitive”. But none of the above is as clear-cut, perhaps, as it might seem. The imperial dynastic rule of China was overthrown in 1912, and it is natural to see the country’s modern history as defined by a series of strongmen from opposing political camps. ![]()
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