Wild Swans, By Jung Chang

Part of my new and spontaneous interest in Chinese history was reading Wild Swans by Jung Chang. I guess I'm kind of late reviewing this considering it was originally buplished in 1992, but it was such a lip biting, zone out for 7 hours, earth shattering piece of biographical history... that I couldn't pass up a chance to write about what I thought of it.

The Book encospasses a historical account of the political and social climate of China from the early 1900s to the late 1970s all through the eyes of three woman; the author's grandmother who was made a concubine to a Warlord General, the author's mother who was a member of the newly formed Communist Party and the author herself and how she was swept into the brainwashing effects of Chairman Mao and his government.

The book hence went through the varying lives of three different generations that was tumbled, twisted and turned within a matter of 20 years between them. From the Famine of the Great Leap Forward to the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution. What I found most shocking was how Chang's grandmother had bound feet, a painful experience of breaking the toes of a young girl's foot to bend over the sole of her foot, a process that had to be repeated during the course of development to prevent them from healing. All because the sight of a hobbling woman had an erotic effect on men; supposedly inticing a protective instinct in them. A woman without bound feet was doomed to a life of spinsterhood and blamed her mother for not binding her feet when young.

I could go on an on about this wonderfully researched and compelling book that you can honestly trust coming from the prespective of a woman who had been in thick of the Moa mania of 1960s China. What I simply couldn't understand was how a nation could get swept away into treating Mao as a Deity, some revered sacred man who's word was gospel. Coming from an Islamic background myself, I was taught not to even bow my head to another being other than the One God. So how an entire nation with it's many millions of millions of people could be so tightly held in Mao's grip is very difficult for me to comprehend; I belive it was the reason for the misfortunes of the Cultural Revolution, with their book burning, teacher disrespecting and knowledge truncating beliefs. It was backward, an awaful time, at time which the Chinese still today accept was a horrible murdering cruel dark era of their history, but the same people still hold Mao in high esteem even though it was crystal clear that he only wanted to acquire personal power, that power like most powers corrupted him, and corrupted him absolutely.

Still, I think I have to grudgingly accept that Mao did raise China out of the Kuomintang's corrupt ways and help to get rid of Japan's infiltration. And perhaps his tight grip of the nation's politics allowed China to progress to what it is today; the world's second largest economy. But like all powerful leaders, I believe the power he held turned him a little crazy, just like Muammar Ghaddafi, Assad and Bush. I think Mubarek was a little more saner than the rest of them, but definitly as power hungry. I theorise that this type of madness could be called 'Presidential Power Syndrome', a state of mind that rejects logic in order to find foundations for one's own decisions, and rejects basic humane qualities like reason, emapthy and guilt. Thankfully I think the British political leaders are a bit distant from attaining this syndrome, but they may be just a little silly in their own way, which is probably, simply, an unavoidable a feature of British politics.

Lesson for the day: don't think you're God.