Synopsis:
Combining the intimacy of memoir with the epic sweep of a great novel, Wild Swans tells the story of three women – Jung Chang, her mother and her grand mother – whose fortune mirror the tumultuous history of twentieth-century China. As the years pass in this beautifully detailed family tapestry, we see three lives unfolding one from the other, through love, tragedy and renewal. Breathtaking in its scope, unforgettable in its description of China’s long nightmare, it is both an important work of contemporary history and an extraordinary testimony to the human spirit.
My review:
A must reading material for all people who have Chinese blood in their vein. It’s not a book about praising heritage or tradition as a Chinese or senseless critical abour China’s communism. This book is combining memoir and history description about how one person manage to almost destroy a huge country like China, not just destroying in physical sense but also their rights as human to have independence mind and thought, but still people praised him as a living god. China modern is like building a new era barely from scrap, lots of great arts from thousands of generation before was destroyed on Maoism regime (my art dealer side really brokenhearted by this fact, imagine what the world can learn nowadays if those arts still intact). I used to hate capitalist oriented people because they seem to think about money above anything else. But oh how ignorant I was, after I read this book, capitalism is like manna from heaven. They don’t put money above anything else, but they just believe that opportunity to make money is solely based on personal capability. So therefore people with great entrepreneur skill ended up with lots of profit than the one who’s lack of skill. It’s fair, right? And I will forever gratify by my grandfather decision to leave China mainland and come to Indonesia. Even my overflowing imagination failed to imagine what happened to my family if we lived there on those terrible years with repressed personal thought and brainwashing slogan “Long Live Mao” over and over again. Like my mom said, that I have tendency to do revolutionist things (even to the degree that my mom sigh a relief when I choose art world instead of political), so to live in China on those Maoism era is my biggest worst nightmare ever. I’m not a racist who think that Chinese is superior that any other races, but I just believe that young generations should not ignorant about their own heritage and in my case is Chinese tradition.
