China does not have a religion, did not have a religion that urges people to be kind, to be universally kind.

So people depend, or have depended on their own nature, either to be kind or to be unkind.

I mean, there is not a general education to teach people to be kind universally,

to think for the other people and to be kind to other people.

I think there is that.

I mean, what I think was more awful with the communist regime, particularly under Mao,

used this deep-rooted unkindness and cruelty for political means.

And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.

My guest today is Jung Chang.

She is one of China's best-selling office. She has written the book Wild Swans,

which follows three generations of her family, her grandmother, her mother and herself,

through the turbulent history of the country in the 20th century.

She has written a number of history books about fascinating Chinese figures from Sun Yat-Zen

to the emperor Dowager, Sisi.

And she has just published a follow-up work called Fly Wild Swans, my mother, myself and China.

We talk today about how to make sense of Chinese history, how the country has changed over the last 100 years,

how the lives of individual Chinese people and particularly women have

been determined by large political events over which they had very limited agency.

About why it is that when you read Chinese literature, whether famous short story writers

like Luzun or indeed the works of Jung Chung herself,

you often get a sense of a real social cruelty of family members and neighbors

treating each other in very cut-throat, very hostile ways.

...