Jung Chang On Life Under Mao & Being Banned From China

Hello Empire listeners and viewers, William Drimple here, and we recently recorded a spectacular bonus episode with Jung Chang. All the horrors of Mao's China that Rana Mitter told us from the point of view of a historian studying archives, Jung Chang tells us firsthand as a woman who was briefly a red guard and as someone who saw her parents thrown into labor camps and disgraced at the Cultural Revolution. It's an extraordinary story that she tells from her brilliant memoir, Wild Swans, and its recent follow-up, Fly Wild Swans, as well as her. Great biography of Mao. Here is an extract of the bonus for you to enjoy.

And if you want the full episode, including her thoughts on Xi Jinping, China's relationship with the US in this new Trump phase of sort of quasi-imperialism, join the club at Empirepoduk.com. The link is in the episode description for the price of a pint a month. You can also get early access to series and add free listening. But now here is a bit of our episode with the great Jung Chang. Jung, it wasn't just your parents who were involved in all these events.

You yourself were a participant in them. You were a member of the Red Guards, you participated in house raids, attended denunciation meetings, and witnessed, I'm sometimes part of real violence against people that were accused of being class enemies. Can you take us back to that moment in your life? What did you believe then and how did it feel to be swept up in that extraordinary fervor of of that moment in history?

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (20 minutes, 2,718 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.