Jung Chang is a Chinese-born British writer whose memoirs and biographies examine the political upheavals of modern China through individual lives. Born in Sichuan Province in 1952, she experienced the Cultural Revolution and worked as a peasant, “barefoot doctor”, steelworker and electrician before studying English at Sichuan University. She moved to Britain in 1978 and earned a doctorate in linguistics from the University of York. Chang became internationally known through Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, which combines family biography and personal memoir to trace the experiences of her grandmother, her mother and herself across warlord rule, Japanese occupation, Communist revolution and Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Chang’s subsequent books have concentrated on powerful figures and families involved in the transformation of China. With historian Jon Halliday, she wrote Mao: The Unknown Story, a strongly critical biography of Mao Zedong; Empress Dowager Cixi reassesses the late Qing ruler’s political career; and Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister follows the Soong sisters, whose marriages and political affiliations placed them at the centre of twentieth-century Chinese history. Her 2025 memoir Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China returns to her own family and considers China’s development since the publication of Wild Swans. Her books are nonfiction rather than historical novels, but they are highly relevant to readers interested in modern Chinese history, biography and political memoir.
