Jung Chang
Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010
BBC
4.4 • 804 Ratings
🗓️ 16 November 2007
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the author Jung Chang. Jung was born in the years after Mao came to power in China and as a child she took part in the Great Leap Forwards by collecting saucepans and nails and trying to melt them down for steel. She was a teenager during the Cultural Revolution and witnessed her parents being denounced and sent to labour camps.
After Mao's death she came to Britain as a student. At the time, she says, she didn't want to think about the past - it used to give her nightmares and so she would pretend she was from Korea. But 10 years after her arrival in Britain, her mother came to visit. She told Jung the stories of her and her grandmother's lives and Jung decided their intimate, family history deserved to have a wider audience. Her book, Wild Swans, has sold more than 12 million copies and won a host of awards.
Investigating her own life and those of her mother and grandmother not only brought the suffering of a nation into sharp focus it was also a liberating experience - once the book was finished, she says, the nightmares stopped.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy. |
| 0:05.4 | My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:10.7 | The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that. |
| 0:17.4 | With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to helping |
| 0:22.7 | you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all put together |
| 0:28.7 | by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music in your life, |
| 0:34.9 | check out BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Krista Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. |
| 0:41.8 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:44.9 | The program was originally broadcast in 2007. |
| 1:12.5 | Music My castaway this week is the author Jung Chang, best known for wild swans, a vivid, intimate, real-life saga, spanning three generations of women surviving under communist rule in China. That one book has been |
| 1:17.7 | nothing short of a phenomenon, winning a clutch of awards, being translated into 30 languages |
| 1:22.7 | and selling over 12 million copies. Jung's life is an extraordinary one. |
| 1:27.7 | As a teenager, she was briefly a member of Chairman Mao's Red Guard. |
| 1:31.5 | She watched her parents being denounced during the Cultural Revolution |
| 1:34.7 | and was herself exiled to live in rural poverty. |
| 1:38.3 | Then, little more than a decade later, she was studying in Britain |
| 1:41.1 | and became the first person from the People's Republic of China |
| 1:44.0 | to receive a doctorate from a British university. |
| 1:47.1 | In writing wild swans, she was unearthing the truths of her own life and those of her mother and grandmother, |
| 1:53.2 | which not only brought the suffering of a nation into crystal clear focus, but also in a way set her free. |
| 1:59.6 | Jung Chang, I say set you free there. |
| 2:02.4 | Did you feel a sense of liberation when you wrote Wild Swans? |
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