“ When I was in China, Mao was Chairman, and parents were terrified to tell their children anything that differed from the party line in case the children repeated it and endangered the whole family. Jung Chang
“ I like to have Chinese furniture in my home as a constant and painful reminder of how much has been destroyed in China. The contrast between the beauty of the past and the ugliness of the modern is no… Jung Chang
“ When he asked my grandmother if she would mind being poor, she said she would be happy just to have her daughter and himself: 'If you have love, even plain water is sweet. Jung Chang
“ Although my book is banned I am still allowed to go to China and travel. There is no longer the kind of control that Mao used to have-there have been deep fundamental changes in society. Jung Chang
“ As a child, my idea of the West was that it was a miasma of poverty and misery, like that of the homeless 'Little Match Girl'in the Hans Christian Andersen story. When I was in the boarding nursery an… Jung Chang
“ We visited Mao's old house, which had been turned into a museum-cum-shrine. It was rather grand––quite different from my idea of a lodging for exploited peasants, as I had expected it to be. A caption… Jung Chang
“ Before our "company" set off, at a wink from the officer, Plumpie stood up and proposed a search. I could see that some of the others thought she was wasting our time, but our company commander cheerf… Jung Chang
“ Instead of sniping at her like Mrs. Mi, Mrs. Ting let my mother do all sorts of things she wanted, like reading novels: before, reading a book without a Marxist cover would bring down a rain of critic… Jung Chang
“ There were no state regulations about hairstyles or clothes. It was what everyone else was wearing that determined the rules of the day. And because the range was so narrow, people were always looking… Jung Chang
“ At night I locked my bedroom door, because [my father] could not sleep and would insist on talking to me, endlessly, without making sense. But there was a small window over the door which could not be… Jung Chang
“ Over the years of the Cultural Revolution, I was to witness people being attacked for saying "thank you" too often, which was branded as "bourgeois hypocrisy"; courtesy was on the brink of extinction. Jung Chang
“ Meetings were an important means of Communist control. They left people no free time, and eliminated the private sphere. The pettiness which dominated them was justified on the grounds that prying int… Jung Chang
“ Finally, in 1888, Cixi approved the Western-style Navy Regulations. It was in endorsing these Regulations that she effectively unveiled China’s first national flag. The country had had no national ens… Jung Chang
“ The two women did more than resolve a major problem, they went on to form a political alliance and launch a coup. Cixi was twenty-five years old and Empress Zhen a year younger. Facing them were eight… Jung Chang
