She only really sounds enthusiastic when she?s describing the natural beauty of some of the places she visited ? and the pleasure she got from reading books and composing poetry, both of which were condemned during the Cultural Revolution. One of the most frightening things about this period was that nobody was safe ? people who had been high-ranking Communist officials before the revolution suddenly found themselves branded ?capitalist-roaders? or ?counter-revolutionaries? (sometimes by their own children) and some of them were driven to suicide.The book is complete with a family tree, chronology, photographs and map of China ? all of which were very useful as I found myself constantly referring to them and without them I would have had a lot more difficulty keeping track of what was going on.As you can probably imagine, it was a very depressing book, as Jung and her family experienced very few moments of true happiness. The descriptions of the Cultural Revolution are also horrific it went on for years and resulted in countless deaths. However, this is just one small part of the book and the first in a long series of shocking episodes the author relates to us.Some parts of the book made me feel so angry and frustrated, such as reading about the senseless waste of food when peasants were taken away from the fields to work on increasing steel output instead, as part of Mao?s ?Great Leap Forward?. Soon after her grandmother?s feet were bound the tradition began to disappear. It?s so awful to think of a little girl being forced to undergo this torture just because tiny feet (or ?three-inch golden lilies?) were thought to be the ideal. It also explained why many people eventually became disillusioned and why the system started to break down.One of the most horrible things in the book occurs within the first chapter when Chang describes her grandmother?s footbinding. This book helped me understand why the Chinese people initally welcomed communism and how millions of children grew up viewing Mao as their hero and never dreaming of questioning his regime. As Jung Chang says in her introduction to the 2003 edition, ?the world knows astonishingly little about him?. Before beginning this book I didn?t know very much at all about Chairman Mao, but I?m obviously not alone in that.

Author wild swans