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  Wild Swans author Jung Chang welcomes interview in her mother tongue

  Wild Swans became an international best seller and  its author Jung Chang an international celebrity when it was published in 1991. It details the lives of three generations of women in China, from the grandmother given as concubine to a war lord, to the mother who worked for the revolution under Mao Zedong, to Jung Chang herself, who joined the Red Guards but who was sent for re-education when her father was arrested and the family was labelled “capitalist roaders”.

  

  After the Cultural Revolution ended, Chang won the right to travel to Britain and her mother  told her to “fly free”. She wrote Wild Swans and now, more than 30 years later, a follow up, Fly, Wild Swans which tells the story of her mother and herself after Wild Swans was published and banned in China.

  She has been widely interviewed and reviewed, but one interview was a little different. As far she knows, Yue Parkinson is the only person in Britain to have interviewed Jung Chang and published an article about Fly, Wild Swans in Chinese.

  Yue, who lives in Portishead, interviewed Jung Chang this month and her piece appeared in FT Chinese, the online site published by the Financial Times group on August 21.  Despite the site being blocked in mainland China this will probably reach more Chinese speaking people than on any other website or publication.

  Yue Parkinson, a member of the SWE branch of the NUJ,  grew up in mainland China went to University in Guangzhou (formerly Canton) and later became a presenter on a live TV entertainment show. As China began to open up she wanted to become a political commentator and in 2004 came to the University of Bristol where she obtained a Masters in international relations. Here she married and had two daughters and her plans for journalism were put on hold.

  “My English was not that good and I did not understand British society. No one believes me, but British culture and the Chinese culture are isolated into two circles with nothing in common. It was hard for me to understand what is happening around me and no one gave me education. British families and friends assumed that everything they knew, I knew, and the reality is I didn’t. That was a really, really hard time to understand my new mother country. I needed to answer those questions myself because no one else could give me the answer. I It took me 20 years to understand what is Britain.”

  She started to write for Chinese language newspapers that are distributed free in Chinatown in London, earning a paltry £15 per article. Yue is quite tough on herself and feels that her early work was shallow with stilted opinions. But she says that perseverance paid off. “I took 20 years to study Britain and now I am able to judge and evaluate and analyse things with two different brains.”

  She started writing for FT Chinese in 2014 at a time when it was widely read in mainland China. Like many online sites, it was blocked by the Chinese government in 2021 and has remained blocked since. Today, Yue writes a regular weekly column. “I had become good enough to explain Britain. Basically, I introduce British politics and history and society to Chinese readers.”

  Yue had met Jung Chang’s brother Pu Zhang through the British Chinese Council and communities in London and when Jung Chang received her CBE in 2024 he helped to arrange a phone interview. Jung Chang was delighted to be interviewed in her mother tongue and later invited Yue and her husband to a party in London.  Yue started a Jung Chang Book Club after finding many fans in Portishead who remember the impact of Wild Swans.

  Once they got to know each other it was easy for Yue to arrange an interview with Chang about the new book. They met at a coffee shop in Notting Hill Gate and talked for an hour and afterwards walked to Chang’s house to collect a Chinese edition. Yue has already had feedback from Jung Chang who wrote to her saying: “I think your angle is fresh and the writing is very good.”

  Both Jung Chang and Yue Parkinson (then Yue He) came to Britain as young women. They have both had to adjust to dramatic changes in culture and their lives to feel at home in a new country. They have both persevered and, in different ways, succeeded. And they both still share a love for China’s people and language.

  … Below is an English translation of Yue’s article in FT Chinese.

  Jung Chang’s New Book Fly, Wild Swans: “My Mother Gave Me Wings and Let Me Fly Free”

  by Yue Parkinson ,  FT Chinese columnist

  Jung Chang, the Chinese-born British writer, has enjoyed the status of a major literary celebrity in the West since the publication of her breakthrough book Wild Swans in 1991. Her personal background is equally remarkable: she was among the first group of students officially sent abroad from China after 1949, arriving in Britain in 1978; she was also among the first mainland Chinese immigrants to earn a British doctorate; and in 2024 she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

  

  The extraordinary attention Wild Swans received in the West came partly from the fact that Chang used the real experiences of her own family to reveal an internal Chinese world that had previously been almost entirely hidden from Western eyes. Before 1978, China had remained largely closed to the outside world, and the realities of ordinary Chinese life were extremely difficult to understand, even for Western governments and intelligence agencies. Through the experiences of her grandmother, her mother and herself — three generations of Chinese women — Wild Swans brought this unfamiliar China into the homes of ordinary Western readers.

  The book turned not only Chang but also her mother, De-hong Xia, into public figures in the West. Usually, celebrities become famous and then write their autobiographies. Chang did the reverse: she wrote her autobiography first, and became famous because of it.

  Her new English-language book, Fly, Wild Swans, was published last September. It is Chang’s fifth book and a sequel to Wild Swans, following the lives of Chang and her mother after 1978. Its subtitle makes its focus explicit: My Mother, Myself and China.

  The book has already been translated into nearly 20 languages. Over the past year, Chang has travelled across Britain and around the world promoting it. The Financial Times, The Times, The Independent, Bloomberg and NPR in the United States are among the media outlets that have interviewed or featured Chang and her new book, while The Guardian and The New York Times have published substantial reviews. Nearly a year after publication, the promotional tour is still continuing, with British literary festivals, public talks and a US visit scheduled for this autumn.

  The Chinese-language edition of Fly, Wild Swans was published in Taiwan this year by Rye Field Publishing. Organised by Yisha Xue, its Chinese-language launch was held at the National Liberal Club in London.

  Last Friday, I interviewed Chang in London about the book. Speaking about the influence her mother had on her life, she told me: “My mother gave me a pair of wings and let me fly free.”

  That single sentence offers a way of understanding both Jung Chang’s life and Fly, Wild Swans. The world came to know Chang because of Wild Swans. But behind her ability to leave China, to write Wild Swans, and ultimately to become the writer she is today, there has always been her mother, De-hong Xia.

  The story begins with a piece of paper in 1967.

  After the Cultural Revolution began, Chang’s father was arrested and imprisoned for opposing Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. Determined to save her husband, Xia travelled to Beijing to appeal to Zhou Enlai. Eventually, she obtained a handwritten note from Zhou, which helped secure her husband’s release.

  Afterwards, Xia did not throw the note away. Instead, she hid it inside a pair of padded cotton shoes handmade by her own mother — Chang’s grandmother, a woman with bound feet. A note from the Chinese premier remained hidden inside those cotton shoes for 11 years.

  Eleven years later, that same piece of paper changed the family’s fate once again.

  In 1978, Chang was given the opportunity to study in Britain on a government scholarship. But the political case against her father dating from the Cultural Revolution had not been completely resolved and could still have affected his daughter. Xia brought out Zhou Enlai’s note, which she had preserved for 11 years, and used it to press for her husband’s full political rehabilitation.

  Her father’s case was finally resolved, and the 26-year-old Chang was able to board a plane for Britain.

  The first freedom her mother gave her was the freedom to fly away. And the piece of paper that helped her do so had been waiting for 11 years inside her grandmother’s cotton shoes.

  A decade later, her mother changed Chang’s life once again. In 1988, Xia came to Britain and stayed with her daughter for six months. She told Chang the story of her own life and of their family’s past, leaving behind more than 60 hours of recorded conversations. Those recordings became the foundation of Wild Swans.

  Her mother had given her the memories of one family. What Chang created from them was the story of three generations of Chinese women intertwined with the history of twentieth-century China. After its publication in 1991, Wild Swans became a sensation across the West, eventually selling more than ten million copies and being translated into dozens of languages. The private memories of one Chinese family became one of the best-known narratives through which Western readers encountered twentieth-century China.

  This created one of the most distinctive relationships at the heart of Chang’s literary success: a mother entrusted the memories of a family to her daughter, and the daughter, in turn, gave those memories to the world.

  If in 1978 her mother helped give Chang the freedom to leave China, then those 60-plus hours of recordings in 1988 gave her the starting point for a professional writing career.

  But perhaps the most important thing Xia gave her daughter was not the precious opportunity to leave China, nor even those invaluable recordings. It was her refusal to allow herself to become an obstacle to her daughter’s freedom. After Wild Swans, Chang’s writing moved beyond family history into modern Chinese history, with books on Empress Dowager Cixi, the Soong sisters and Mao Zedong. The daughter wrote in Britain; the mother continued to live in China. Chang told me that her mother understood that her writing could create pressure for her, yet she never asked her daughter to avoid particular subjects. Instead, she wanted her to write freely and honestly.

  She gave her daughter the freedom to leave. She also gave her the freedom to continue writing.

  That respect for her children’s freedom was not limited to Chang. Loyal readers of Wild Swans will remember Chang’s younger brother, “Xiao-hei”. His real name is Pu Zhang. He also lives in London and is a writer, and has recently published an English-language book, A Tibetan Girl Called Ata. Brother and sister have both become writers, approaching China from different perspectives.

  Their mother never asked her children living abroad to remain silent simply because she herself continued to live in China. For Chang, this may be one of the rarest gifts contained within the “wings” her mother gave her. Maternal love usually carries with it worry and attachment; Xia never allowed that attachment to become a restraint on her children’s freedom.

  This also helps explain why, 35 years later, Chang’s new book is called Fly, Wild Swans.

  The year 1978 forms the dividing line between the two books. Wild Swans ends with Chang leaving China; Fly, Wild Swans begins from there. The daughter went to Britain while the mother remained in Chengdu. One lived outside China, the other within it. Their lives unfolded in different directions, yet remained intimately connected.

  “Wild Swans was the story of my grandmother, my mother and me. In Fly, Wild Swans, it becomes my mother, myself and China.”

  Three generations of women have become two women. The person who has never left the centre of the story is the mother.

  On 15 April this year, De-hong Xia died in Chengdu at the age of 94.

  Ten days later, on 25 April, Chang published a lengthy tribute to her mother in Britain’s Independent, looking back over her life. The Times, The New York Times, The Boston Globe and the Miami Herald, among others, subsequently published dedicated obituaries of Xia.

  Thirty-five years ago, the West first came to know De-hong Xia through her daughter’s Wild Swans. Thirty-five years later, she had an obituary of her own.

  Chang translated her tribute to her mother into Chinese and included it at the end of the Taiwanese edition of Fly, Wild Swans, as the book’s epilogue, “The Priceless Gift My Mother Gave Me.”

  In it, she records their final “meeting”.

  On 14 April 2026, Xia was wearing an oxygen mask. She could no longer speak and her eyes were closed. Through a video call on her phone, Chang kissed her mother’s forehead and cheeks through the screen and asked:

  “Mum, can you feel that I am beside you?”

  Her mother’s eyelids moved slightly, clearly trying to tell her daughter that she could.

  The following day, Xia died.

  At the end of her tribute, Chang writes that when the moment finally came, she found herself unexpectedly calm. The final “priceless gift” her mother left her was a sense of inner peace.

  Chang’s schedule of literary festivals, public talks and international promotion for the new book continues into this autumn and winter. Nor has she put down her pen. Fly, Wild Swans is her fifth book, but it may not be her last.

  From the tiny bound feet of a grandmother, to a piece of paper hidden by a mother inside a pair of cotton shoes, to the wings finally given to a daughter: across three generations and almost a century, three Chinese women travelled from being unable to walk freely to being able to fly free.