Jung Chang
| Jung Chang | |||
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in London (January 2010)
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| Born |
25 March 1952 Yibin, Sichuan, China |
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| Occupation | Writer | ||
| Nationality | British citizen | ||
| Period | 1986–present | ||
| Genre | Biography | ||
| Subject | China | ||
| Spouse | Jon Halliday | ||
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Jung Chang (simplified Chinese: 张戎; traditional Chinese: 張戎; pinyin: Zhāng Róng; Wade–Giles: Chang Jung, Mandarin pronunciation: [tʂɑ́ŋ ɻʊ̌ŋ], born 25 March 1952) is a Chinese-born British writer now living in London, best known for her family autobiography Wild Swans, selling over 10 million copies worldwide but banned in the People's Republic of China.
Her 832-page biography of Mao Zedong, Mao: The Unknown Story, written with her husband, the Irish historian Jon Halliday, was published in June 2005.
Chang was born 25 March 1952 in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China. Her parents were both Communist Party of China officials, and her father was greatly interested in literature. As a child she quickly developed a love of reading and writing, which included composing poetry.
As Party cadres, life was relatively good for her family at first; her parents worked hard, and her father became successful as a propagandist at a regional level. His formal ranking was as a "level 10 official", meaning that he was one of 20,000 or so most important cadres, or ganbu, in the country. The Communist Party provided her family with a dwelling in a guarded, walled compound, a maid and chauffeur, as well as a wet-nurse and nanny for Chang and her four siblings. This level of privilege in China's relatively impoverished 1950s was extraordinary.
Chang writes that she was originally named Er-hong (二鴻 "Second Swan"), which sounds like the Chinese word for "faded red". As communists were "deep red", she asked her father to rename her when she was 12 years old, specifying she wanted "a name with a military ring to it." He suggested "", which means "martial affairs."
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