Skip to Content

'The most dangerous profession'

21 October 2019

‘I had always wanted to be a writer as a child but couldn't spell out this dream to myself because during the Cultural Revolution all writers were condemned. To be a writer was the most dangerous profession. I wrote my first poem aged 16 and destroyed it. When I was working spreading manure in the paddy fields aged 16 and 17, I was always writing in my head. In my home town there was a black market selling books that had been banned. My 13-year-old brother was very entrepreneurial. He made money dealing Mao badges and used it to buy books, which he hid in a hole he dug in the garden... My father loved writing and encouraged us to write diaries. But I had to destroy my diary in the revolution.'

Jung Chang, author of the bestselling Wild Swans, Empress Dowager Cixi (with Jon Halliday) Mao The Untold Story and the just-published Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister, about the sisters who helped shape modern China, in the Observer. http://www.jungchang.net/