China - The word conjures up mixed images. Small eyes, large foreheads, small noses, Anglo-phobic, Communism....If you are historically inclined, additional images of various dynasties, Opium, the 1962 war, Mao and Tianenmen Square may add to the standard fare. Beyond this, China has remained an enigma, to a great extent. That the language is one of the most difficult to master has not helped matters any!
Reasons: Whatever the ’cracy’, Chinese rulers have always chosen to let the world remain blind when it comes to their affairs. They have also been less than overwhelming in welcoming tourists and curious eyes into their land. (The recent years, of course, has been an exception). This, of course, couples with the fact that even today, what the world learns about China is what the official machinery wants them to. Even the symbols of ultimate freedom on the Net have not been able to really manoeuvre this hurdle of "Take it or Leave It".
What’s the Deal?: There, it now seems, is more to China than meets the external eye. The story of a populace occupying the Numero Uno position in sheer number. A story that has so far been untold, due to fear, ostracism, clamp-downs and a ruler-servile media. A story of deprivation, horror, confusion, torture, famine, suppression and unthinkable suffering.
For once, we get a ringside view of all this and more, from the heart of one who was there and saw it all. A narrative, which is a gust of wind to clear the smoke intentionally released by the ruling few, around the billions beneath, to shroud reality with glib talk, Iron Hands, dogmas and Utopian principles. A breeze so cool that even the inhabitants, who never had the chance to know what freedom really meant, are out basking in it, mulling over the hard, inhuman path their parents had to tread, to put them where they are, today.
Who’s the Whistleblower?: "Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China" is a true-life narration (though it seems a story too gory!) of three generations of Chinese, told by the youngest. Before you get ideas about the ’Swan’-iness being due to curved backs and long necks of the author and her folks, here is the gen! The author, her mother and granny share the name of ’Hong’, which means ’Wild Swan’ in Chinese! (If such nomenclature has your eyebrows arched, read more, in this book!)
The author is Jung (pronounced Yoong) Chang, now married to a British citizen and currently living in Britain, and like Mc D says "Lovin’ It!". She went there first in 1978, on a rare scholarship, and decided to stay on. In 1988, her mother went to Britain to visit, when she told the Story, of her own mother and herself to her daughter (Jung) of 36 years. The aftereffects are best told in the words of the author, from the Epilogue. "I sat down and let my own memory surge out and the unshed tears flood my mind. I decided to write ’Wild Swans’. The past was no longer too painful to recall, because I had found love and fulfilment, and therefore, tranquility" Amen!
Short Story: The experiences start on a small and painful note (quite literally) - describing how Chinese men were turned on by tiny female feet! Wondering how the feet size can be changed? Well, the Chinese knew it! They bent the toes downward, and tied them there by cloth bandages, forever, leading to the women hobbling around on dainty feet right from Childhood, all through life- all for prospects of better matrimony, and thereafter, to preserve it!
The story moves on to how the Grandmother, a concubine to a warlord general, then a young belle, got ’bound’, married and so on, ending with the author’s ’escape’ in 1978 to the ’underdeveloped, deprived and capitalist’ country of Britain to study English (in some adjectives coined by the Communist setup of the time). Thanks to the English she learnt, we now have this chance to understand China as it was, through Jung’s words, tears and sighs.
Born to hard core Commie parents, the author had a deprived childhood, to put it mildly! A father, quite high on the Commie ladder as well as the Ethos. So much so, that he not only denied his family any entitled privileges, but also took away a few, in ’adherence to the strictest forms of Communist principles’. Exemplary leadership behaviour, stretched to fanatic limits! (How I wish we had even a couple of politicos with even an iota of that conviction! Their families would have left them all!) The mother, herself a staunch Member of The Party, hardly was home - absent on calls of service. Thankfully, she did not take her brief as far as the husband did! Brought up by the granny, the author herself falls into the omnipresent lure of the Cultural Revolution, like everyone else who fell - by force, if not on their own! Come what may - famine, disease, torture, killings - the believers always blamed temselves, never the system and never, of course, the ’all knowing’ Chairman Mao! All one needs to know on how to oppress and rule a huge populace - pitting them against one another, maintaining a constant level of internal war, regular denunciation of ’traitors to the revolution’, torture, hypocrisy, suppression, while still maintaining the moral high ground- came so easily to Mao (If he had been alive, he would have published ’MaoS DOeS for Dummies’!). Like the adage of ’a woman behind every successful man’, Mme Mao turns out to be a case of ’more loyal than the King’! If Mao said ’Punish’, she translated it as ’Pull out the hands’! Surrounded by a closed coterie, Mao and the missus toss China and its people around, like a painted marble in a giant palm, for worse.
So, what do the ultra-loyal ’Red’ parents get, in turn for loyalty? In the continuous, enforced and sickening flips of the population between ’Loyal comrade’ and ’Capitalist roader’, at every spoken or inferred word from Mao, it is only a question of time, before the loyal couple are branded ’traitors’. Self criticism in public and pariah status for the family become a daily ordeal. Public beatings by mobs were common, on orders from ’top’. Often, students were told to thrash their teachers, doctors, lawyers etc. How dare they ’practise Capitalist vocations’?! Destruction of all heritage, personal properties (though Mao had his multiple private holiday homes!), libraries, art, music and love in all their expressions... the list is endless and disgusting.
Highlights: A compulsive read, un-put-down-able, made of true and raw experiences heretofore unrevealed, laced with proof of how the human mind, will and muscle (and bones!) can be shaped, twisted and broken with elan, by a single, cunning man. A revelation of the true face of Mao, the man worshipped the world over by the unknowing millions.
A must read for every man and woman, with a conscience that cares, this is one book with not a trace of comedy, unless you find wit in the sound of bones breaking on glass, or the lunatic laughs of a man at the end of his tether and wits!
When you open Wild Swans, prepare for a serious read, some wetness in the eyes and a frequent pang from the heart!