Jung Chang - Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
When thinking about the past, it is very easy to forget that it was experienced by people. Actual human people who felt and suffered and acted and reacted to the world in which they found themselves. Much post-modern history writing seeks to address this issue and to find a place for personal experience and memory within grand historical narratives. As I understand it, this issue is particularly difficult for historians of modern China dealing with both the official histories sanctioned by the Chinese government and the unofficial histories of the long twentieth century in China. And all this before one starts to think about issues of memory and personal experiences. Indeed, a quick Google search of the words 'history and memory China' produces some 134,000,000 results of, I'm sure, varying quality and content. I raise this point in relation to Jung Chang’s now classic book, Wild Swans , not to sound pretentious, although, let’s face it, that ship has sailed, but because ...
