Empress Dowager Cixi

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Once again, Chang amazes me with her ability of translating the incondensable - a life - onto pages. Cixi's image, characterized by most as ruthless and power-hungry, is slightly mediated in this biography, and her life's history compellingly and very readably spelled out. I turned to the first page as a stranger to her policies but closed it bearing sufficiently more knowledge concerning her life (albeit power-skimming the final 100 pages). Of course, Cixi's heartbreak over the eunuch An Dehai is tragic and her vengeance further proof of her bitter streak, an unforgettable tale in the book. Her humble beginnings are astonishing considering the level of power to which she rose later on in life.

Perhaps Chang will never outdo Wild Swans, but Empress Dowager Cixi is nonetheless a telling biography of a woman whose legacy is tarnished with murders/grabs for power but is nonetheless an important figure in Chinese history who sought to not only modernize China but also give women more power and prevent the irrational belligerence of men from hurling China into war.

Meeting Jung Chang (yes!) and getting my copy signed was the ultimate cherry on top.

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Wild Swans

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Since reading Plath's unabridged journals, I've developed a slight phobia for literary tomes but Jung Chang's Wild Swans has reminded me what a pleasure it is to tackle hundreds of pages. An introspective, detailed memoir/family biography that does not on any page expunge the details of the Cultural Revolution's atrocities, Wild Swans traces Chang's family history from the KMT years prior Mao's rise to power to Chang's departure for Britain after Mao's death.

Having studied the Cultural Revolution last year, I was able to link much of my academic knowledge with the personal traumas Chang and her family underwent (e.g. countryside reforms, August rallies), which enhanced my read; moreover, since I'm Chinese, much of what I read struck home. It is astounding to consider how an entire generation was crushed and confined by a single puppeteer - Mao - who built for himself a 形象 so godlike that even in the darkest days of the revolution it remained incontestable. I'm glad I escaped it. It even took Chang, the daughter of 'class-enemies' and at one time even a Red Guard herself, to doubt Mao only after the revolution was well-over even though she had experienced the chaos and brainwashing first-hand.

When Chang came to England, all she wanted to do was forget about her past. Yet when her mother left her after a visit - 10 years later - with 60 hours worth of tape recordings, she knew she had to write it all down.

It may be near-impossible to condense such a past and trove of dark memories into a book, but the matter-of-fact (and at times poignant) way in which Chang chronicles her past - and that of millions of Chinese - sews this book together, making it not only readable but also immensely memorable.

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http://www.wesaidgotravel.com/taiwan-rainbow-at-kenting

Myriad from Maymay707 on 8tracks Radio.

Bruised bananas

Bruised bananas

At first, there were
10 hanging off
The same thick stem,
Ripe and yellowing.

Now, three sit
In the latticed basket,
Wearing their pockmarked skins,
Bruised and blackening.