With her latest book, Chung has taken on the last Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi (also spelled Tzu Hsi), a woman that most present day Chinese have been schooled to revile as a cruel and pleasure-loving woman. Not surprisingly, Jung's books are today banned in China. Wild Swans was followed by the minutely-researched Mao: The Unknown Story (2005) a damning tome that tears to shreds the many myths about the "Great Leader," showing how Mao misused power for his own selfish ends. It opened my own eyes to the revolution that had taken place there, a revolution we in the West knew little about at the time. But rather than simply publishing revealing documents outright, she does painstaking research to compile the full story about her subjects.Ĭhang's book, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (1992), was a compelling bestseller that described her family's experience (she was born in Sichuan Province in 1952) living under the Communist regime in China. Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China, by Jung Chang (Random House, 415 pages, $35 hardcover, $16.99 Kobo/Kindle) - British writer Jung Chang is a myth-buster, perhaps like a scholar's version of WikiLeaks.
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