Reflection On The Nook ‘Wild Swans: Three Daughters Of China’ By Jung Chang
‘Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China’ is a life story of three female by the author Jung Chang, her mother together with her grandma.
The book took place around the 1910s during the last years of the Qing dynasty in China. Chang first talked about her grandmother’s life as a concubine of a general, then moving on to her mother who worked for Mao Zedong in the Chinese Communist Party. The last section of the book is Chang’s autobiography which talked about the experience she had when she served Mao Zedong as a red guard during the Cultural Revolution.
Some thoughts came up to my mind whilst reading this book. I’m confused about the existence of concubine was justifiable why in the past. Concubinage describes a relationship in which the woman had a lower status than the man. The man and woman are allowed to have a sexual relationship, but they are prohibited from marriage. This resulted in a habit which is similar yet worse than polygamy. Although tradition Chinese culture valued men more than women, I still think it is not reasonable for women deprived of their rights, even their rights to love. What has happened in the early 20th century in China is that, whether a woman was going to be a wife or concubine is to be decided by their parents, and she doesn’t have a chance to speak for herself. Fortunately, the problem is alleviating currently, though some Chinese parents still have a strong incentive to control the fate of their daughters, the law doesn’t allow them to do so. When I looked up the internet to search for some related information of this book, I’ve realized that this book was banned in China, but not in Hong Kong and Taiwan. This book mentioned the brutal ruling of the communist party during the mid-19th century when Mao Zedong was the chairman. Apart from causing a famine in China from 1958 to 1960. Mao also led a cultural revolution which lasted for ten years.
In the end, all the precious artifacts were destroyed and the minds of the people were changed, which made China weaker than ever before. As the communist party regarded the years of turmoil as a scandal, they don’t allow any media to spread anymore ‘facts’ regarding the revolution, so as to prevent the new generation to know about the negative side of China. Censorship is indeed one of the biggest problems in China, it doesn’t only affect Chinese’s knowledge of their own history, but also tarnishes her international image. Other countries will simply regard China as a country that isn’t willing to admit her own mistakes, which induces a possibility of China being isolated when international issues regarding human rights are being discussed. In conclusion, this book introduced to me more about Chinese culture.
