The good person of Sichuan
Acclaimed Chinese author Jung Chang fled tyrannical rule to start a new life in London. She speaks to Alistair Duncan about her love for Notting Hill and her desire to return to her homeland
Above: Jung Chang
Jung Chang has devoted her writing career to directing the attention of Western minds eastwards, casting a spotlight on China, the land of her birth. Through her bestselling 1993 family memoir Wild Swans and her recently published biography, Chairman Mao, she has stoked our fascination with the country. But she remembers the day she left China and came to London with unbridled glee.
‘London was like another planet,’ she recalls, smiling, as if still held by that moment of being bewitched by our capital’s alien charms. ‘I recall going for a walk in Hyde Park. Every blade of grass I saw, every flower petal, made me wild with joy. The China I came from was still very much under Mao’s influence, even though he died in 1976. He was so extreme that he banned horticulture as a bourgeois activity. You can imagine my joy at seeing all these wonderful flowerbeds.’
The acclaimed author, whose epic, Wild Swans, retraced three generations of Chinese women through the 20th century and sold over 10 million copies, has lived in Notting Hill since the 1980s. That the area is fringed by three of London’s most beautiful parks – Holland Park, Hyde Park and Kensington Park Gardens – is one of the reasons that it is such a good habitat for writers, she explains. ‘I composed a lot of Wild Swans while walking in Kensington Palace Gardens. I went there for a walk every day. And I thought about Mao a lot, while in the parks. I used to jog in them when I first moved here, though I’ve given that up now.’
Chang’s latest tome, Mao: The Unknown Story, charts the life of the communist leader who ruled China with murderous authority for 27 years. The culmination of more than 12 years of painstaking research, the book explores many myths about Mao, arguing that he was a monstrous tyrant, ‘as evil as Hitler or Stalin’.
‘It was upsetting researching this book in many ways,’ admits Chang, who co-wrote the book with her historian husband, Jon Halliday. ‘After all, he was responsible for over 70 million deaths. But our book is not a catalogue of Mao’s crimes. It’s an account of his life. It’s full of drama. Actually, he’s a biographer’s dream. He’s probably the world’s most important man about whom little is known. When a biographer or historian discovers one new thing there is cause for rejoice. We were able to discover so many things. It was very exciting.’
The book has been translated into 30 languages (Chang is still busying herself travelling the world doing talks and book signings, although she laughingly admits that Jon is now ‘Mao’ed out’). But the edition that she remains most patently proud of is the Chinese one.
‘It was absolutely riveting to see how this book had produced an enormous impact in China,’ she says. ‘The young generation in China has been brought up on this cult of Mao, textbooks that have been telling them things that are completely different from our book. There is a tremendous sense of shock. Overwhelmingly, Chinese people are saying, ‘we must face our history.’ China can’t move forward without rejecting Mao and all Mao’s legacies.’
The book is banned in China (as is Wild Swans). However, as it is printed in Hong Kong, many copies have been smuggled into China. Many ‘enthusiastic readers’ have also scanned the entire book and posted it on the internet for download, so it has managed to reach a sizable Chinese readership.
‘Up until recently, you could read it online, though the Chinese authorities have recently been quite effective in eradicating it from the internet. You go to these websites now and titles are still there but the contents are deleted.’
Chang reads many comments made in Chinese chatrooms and blogs to see what effect her book is having, but she never emails anyone in China to engage in a debate – it would simply be too risky for her correspondents.
So what about Jung Chang’s personal relationship with the Chinese regime? Is she allowed to re-enter the country herself these days, after everything?
‘My last trip was last year,’ she says. ‘I’ve just applied for a visa to go and see my mother. I’m still waiting. I keep my fingers crossed. My mother is elderly and in poor health. She can’t travel long distances.’ Chang pauses. Does she worry that she won’t be let back in? ‘I do worry,’ she sighs, ‘but what can I do? This is a worry I have to live with.’
Though the condition of her homeland is a source of enormous consternation for Chang, living in Notting Hill, she seems very content. She was born in the Sichuan Province of China in 1952 and, being a gifted student who excelled at her English studies at Sichuan University, she won a place to study in the west in the late 1970s. She was one of only a handful of people, from a province of 90 million, allowed to land on British soil at the time and ‘immediately fell in love with London’, soon setting up home here.
Chang concedes that Notting Hill has completely changed since she moved here. ‘The shops have become smarter. Boutiques arrived’. But she likes that. ‘I like wandering around the beautiful shops,’ she says. She then tells me that she loves local Italian restaurant L’Accento, perusing the stalls at Portobello market and the Electric Cinema. ‘They have these kind of beds – almost like opium beds. You can recline comfortably, watching a movie. It’s just heaven.’
I say that being a writer myself, I know all too well how oppressive it can seem, ruminating on sentences for hours on end, while staring at a whirring computer screen. Is that why she so loves popping out? Does it offer welcome relief?
‘Not really,’ she says. ‘In my office, there are sash windows, offering wonderful London street scenes. I can see a gigantic plane tree with cascading branches, a street lamp, a lovely old one, the kind that is obligatory in most films about London. And I can see double-decker buses sailing by, people walking under umbrellas. It’s the most ordinary London scene but I never tire of it.’
Mao: The Unknown Story is published by Vintage, £9.99