The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

Empress Dowager Cixi

From the bestselling author of Wild Swans and Mao: The Unknown Story, the extraordinary story of the woman who single-handedly dragged China into the modern age

Jung Chang tells a story and what a colourful tale it is…This is history at its most readable.

A truly authoritative account of Cixi’s rule. Her story is both important and evocative.

Filled with new revelations, it's a gripping and surprising story of an extraordinary woman in power. Using Chinese sources, totally untapped by western books, this reappraises one of the great monstresses of modern history... Jung Chang's revisionism means that this book reveals a new and different woman: ambitious, sometimes murderous, but pragmatic and unique. All of this adds up to make Empress Dowager Cixi a powerful read.

If there is one woman who mattered in the history of modern China, it is the empress dowager Cixi…[Her] conventional image is queried in this detailed and beautifully narrated biography, which at long last restores the empress dowager to her rightful place. Chang’s book relies heavily on the vast holdings in the imperial archives in Beijing... She has a wonderful eye for the telling detail and excels at unravelling palace intrigues and corridor politics.

Chang has a proven Midas touch... Empress Dowager, by returning to female experience in the style of Wild Swans yet focusing, like Mao, on a controversial ruler, should appeal to fans of both.

In this vivid biography, as colourful and intricate as the embroidery on a Chinese robe, [Jung Chang] uses new evidence and meticulous research to cast a spotlight on the amazing woman she regards as the mother of modern China…This is a rich, dramatic story of rebellions, battles, plotting, rivalry, foreign invasion, punishment and forbidden love.

This is an important book, drawing attention to a period in China's history that has received little, and usually only negative, attention. Chang writes with verve, energy and evident concern for the country in which her books are proscribed and her family was made to suffer during the Cultural Revolution.

Fascinating… A depiction of the birth of modern China and an intimate portrait of a woman, this is history writing at its best

A beautifully narrated biography… Chang has a wonderful eye for the telling detail

Filled with new revelations… Gripping and surprising… Powerful.

Absorbing… Chang has a novelist’s eye for small detail… Chang weaves a suspenseful, anecdote-laden tale.

One of those rare non-fiction books that reads like a novel without compromising the quality of research – we couldn’t put it down

One of the most important authors of our age, in that she has shown China to the world.

This is an electrifying description of the birth of modern China and an intimate portrait of an extraordinary woman

Chinese political history can be a tough nut to crack, but Chang weaves in and out of Cixi’s biography with an ease that is almost as astounding as the events themselves

Jung Chang is the best-selling author of Wild Swans (1991, which the Asian Wall Street Journal called the most read book about China), and Mao: The Unknown Story (2005, with Jon Halliday), which was described by Time Magazine as ‘an atom bomb of a book’. Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 15 million copies outside mainland China where they are both banned.. She was born in China in 1952, and came to Britain in 1978. She lives in London.

Discover the extraordinary story of the woman who brought China into the modern age, from the bestselling author of Wild Swans 
 
 In this groundbreaking biography, Jung Chang vividly describes how Empress Dowager Cixi – the most important woman in Chinese history – brought a medieval empire into the modern age. Under her, the ancient country attained virtually all the attributes of a modern state and it was she who abolished gruesome punishments like ‘death by a thousand cuts’ and put an end to foot-binding. Jung Chang comprehensively overturns the conventional view of Cixi as a diehard conservative and cruel despot and also takes the reader into the depths of her splendid Summer Palace and the harem of Beijing’s Forbidden City, where she lived surrounded by eunuchs – with one of whom she fell in love, with tragic consequences. 
 
 Packed with drama, fast-paced and gripping, it is both a panoramic depiction of the birth of modern China and an intimate portrait of a woman: as the concubine to a monarch, as the absolute ruler of a third of the world’s population, and as a unique stateswoman. 
 
 ‘Powerful’ Simon Sebag Montefiore 
 
 ‘Truly authoritative’ New York Times 
 
 ‘Wonderful’ Sunday Times 
 
 **Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Biography Prize**

Mao: The Unknown Story

The most authoritative life of Mao ever written, by the bestselling author of Wild Swans, Jung Chang and her husband, Jon Halliday.

The first great political biography of the twenty-first century

This is a bombshell of a book... Jung Chang and Jon Halliday have done this extraordinary country a huge service with this book, which will one day be read as widely within China as it will deservedly be in the outside world

Chang and Halliday cast new and revealing light on nearly every episode in Mao's tumultuous life... Magnificent... It is a stupendous work

Devastating... Awesome... Mesmerising... The most powerful, compelling and revealing political biography of modern times. Few books are destined to change history, but this one will

A triumph. It is a mesmerising portrait of tyranny, degeneracy, mass murder and promiscuity, a barrage of revisionist bombshells, and a superb piece of research. This is the first intimate, political biography of the greatest monster of them all

Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's meticulously researched biography explodes every unquestioned truth... An extraordinary exercise in iconoclasm that is likely to play its own part in changing history

What Chang and Halliday have done is immense and surpasses, as a biography, all that has gone before

This book's strength is [Chang and Halliday's] understanding of the importance of bringing the human, or inhuman, alive in Mao's story. This, they do brilliantly

The authors shred the myths in which Mao's national and international reputation rested... Jung Chang and John Halliday have done this extraordinary country a huge service with this book, which will one day be read as widely inside China as it will deservedly be in the outside world

A magisterial work... This magnificent biography methodically demolishes every pillar of Mao's claim to sympathy or legitimacy... A triumph

An important book in ways not envisaged... A work of unanswerable authority

Jung Chang and Jon Halliday enter a savage indictment drawing on a host of sources, including important Soviet ones, to blow away the miasma of deceit and ignorance which still shrouds Mao's life from many Western eyes... Jung Chang delivers a cry of anguish on behalf of all of those in her native land who, to this day, are still not free to speak of these things

Demonstrating the same pitilessness that they judge to be Mao's most formidable weapon, they unstitch the myths that sustained him in power for forty years and that continue to underpin China's regime... I suspect that when China comes to terms with its pastthis book will have played a role

Chilling... Impressive... An extremely compelling portrait of Mao that will still shock many

Decisive biography...they have investigated every aspect of his personal life and career, peeling back the layers of lies, myths, and what we used to think of as facts... What Chang and Halliday have done is immense and surpasses, as a biography, everything that has gone before

Jung Chang was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China, in 1952. She was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen and then worked as a peasant, a 'barefoot doctor', a steelworker and an electrician before becoming an English-language student and, later, an assistant lecturer at Sichuan University. She left China for Britain in 1978 and was subsequently awarded a scholarship by York University, where she obtained a PhD in Linguistics in 1982 - the first person from the People's Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British university. Her award-winning book, Wild Swans, was published in 1991. 
 
Jon Halliday is a former Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King's College, University of London. He has written or edited eight previous books.

The most authoritative life of Mao ever written, by the bestselling author of Wild Swans, Jung Chang and her husband, historian Jon Halliday. 
 
Based on a decade of research, and on interviews with many of Mao's close circle in China who have never talked before, and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him, this is the most authoritative life of Mao ever written. It is full of startling revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and showing a completely unknown Mao: he was not driven by idealism or ideology; his intimate and intricate relationship with Stalin went back to the 1920s, ultimately bringing him to power; he welcomed Japanese occupation of much of China; and he schemed, poisoned and blackmailed to get his way. 
 After Mao conquered China in 1949, his secret goal was to dominate the world. In chasing this dream he caused the deaths of 38 million people in the greatest famine in history. In all, well over 70 million Chinese perished under Mao's rule, in peacetime. 
 
Combining meticulous history with the story-telling style of Wild Swans, this biography makes immediate Mao's roller-coaster life, as he intrigued and fought every step of the way to force through his unpopular decisions. Mao's character and the enormity of his behaviour towards his wives, mistresses and children are unveiled for the first time. 
 
This is an entirely fresh look at Mao in both content and approach. It will astonish historians and the general reader alike. 
 
 ‘This a bombshell of a book’, Chris Patten, The Times 
 
‘The first great political biography of the twenty-first century’ Spectator

Jung Chang

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is a monumental work, worthy both of Jung Chang’s Mao and of the great, rambling, heterogeneous Chinese folk epics of the oral past, such as The Water Margin and The Three Kingdoms. Its three fairy-tale heroines, poised between east and west, spanned three centuries, two continents and a revolution, with consequences that reverberate, perhaps now more than ever, in all our lives to this day.

Outstanding... As with her previous books, most famously Wild Swans, it is Chang’s sympathetic, storyteller’s eye — her attention to deeply human detail during the most extraordinary circumstances — that makes her work remarkable. Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is another triumph.

The Soong sisters were an extraordinary trio… Jung Chang has shown, in books such as Wild Swans, her instinct for a compelling story, and that instinct stands her in good stead here as she weaves her way through the complex history of China from the 1880s to the 1970s… Well worth reading, in particular for the way it shows how powerful women have helped to shape modern China. At a time when, 70 years after Mao’s victory, the country’s political leadership contains almost no prominent women at all, that is a particularly apposite message to hear.

Chang is too deft a biographer to tell you how to think. The sisters are sage and foolish, selfless and vain, brave and fearful, loyal and treacherous... It is up to the reader to decide if the Soongs are fairytale princesses or wicked stepsisters... The sisters were divided by politics, united by love. Even as you recoil from their actions, you are moved by their bond. In this lucid, wise, forgiving biography Chang gives a new twist to an old line. Behind every great man... is a Soong sister.

One of this autumn's biggest reads, it's an astounding story told with verve and insight.

Utterly engrossing… It stars a trio of extraordinary women… Their gripping collective story reads like Wild Swans meets the Mitfords; and the history feels remarkably close to our own times too.

A remarkable story of war, communism and espionage related with nuanced sympathy... The lives of the three Song sisters – the subjects of Jung Chang’s spirited new book – are more than worthy of an operatic plot.

Gripping... Chang paints a deft portrait… Anyone who has read Jung Chang's marvellous 1991 best-seller Wild Swans will know she is a skilled storyteller, with a masterful eye for telling details. This book, despite its length, fairly zips along, leaving you hungry to know more about China's extraordinary and turbulent history in the past hundred years.

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister, written in a compulsive style that sweeps the story along, is much the fullest account of their remarkable lives available in English… The sisters make a great story told with considerable sympathy for them... The warts-and-all portrait of “the Father of the Republic” is a welcome corrective to 
the conventional hagiography.

A great idea, great research and great writing. This remarkable biography of the Soong sisters zips along, meshing the personal and the political with style.

Urgent and powerful… a fascinating window into 20th-century Chinese history.

A riveting and action-packed story where it's hard not to be enthralled by the murky underworld of the Soongs — its numerous twists and turns are saturated with money, travel, history, corruption, treachery, risk, honour, glory, fear, deception, power, and politics.

A fascinating tale of the three Soong sisters who played a significant role in the making of 20th-century China…[told] with lacerating honesty.

An enjoyable take on China’s turbulent 20th-century history, seen through the revealing perspective of three women at the centre of power

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is a gripping story of love, war, intrigue, bravery, glamour and betrayal, which takes us on a sweeping journey… a group biography that is by turns intimate and epic, Jung Chang reveals the lives of three extraordinary women who helped shape twentieth-century China.

A story of love, war, intrigue, bravery, glamour and betrayal.

[Chang’s] breathtaking new new triple biography restores these “tiger-willed” women to their extraordinarily complex humanity… As in her bestselling 1991 memoir Wild Swans, Chang uses a gripping and emotional personal story to draw Western readers into the history of China.

Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA NON-FICTION CROWN 2020* 
 
Meet the three women who helped shape the course of modern Chinese history; a gripping story of sisterhood and betrayal from the bestselling author of Wild Swans. 
 
They were the most famous sisters in China. As the country battled seismic transformations these three women left an indelible mark on history. 
 
 Red Sister rose to be Mao's vice-chair. 
 Little Sister became first lady of pre-Communist Nationalist China. 
 Big Sister made herself one of country's richest women. 
 
 Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister takes us on a sweeping journey from exiles' quarters in Japan and Berlin to secret meeting rooms in Moscow, and from the compounds of the Communist elite in Beijing to the corridors of power in democratic Taiwan. By turns intimate and epic, Jung Chang reveals the lives of three extraordinary women who helped shape twentieth-century China.

Jung Chang

Praise for Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is a monumental work, worthy both of Jung Chang’s Mao and of the great, rambling, heterogeneous Chinese folk epics of the oral past, such as The W ...

Outstanding... As with her previous books, most famously Wild Swans, it is Chang’s sympathetic, storyteller’s eye — her attention to deeply human detail during the most extraordinary circumstances — th ...

The Soong sisters were an extraordinary trio… Jung Chang has shown, in books such as Wild Swans, her instinct for a compelling story, and that instinct stands her in good stead here as she weave ...

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is a monumental work, worthy both of Jung Chang’s Mao and of the great, rambling, heterogeneous Chinese folk epics of the oral past, such as The W ...

Outstanding... As with her previous books, most famously Wild Swans, it is Chang’s sympathetic, storyteller’s eye — her attention to deeply human detail during the most extraordinary circumstances — th ...

The Soong sisters were an extraordinary trio… Jung Chang has shown, in books such as Wild Swans, her instinct for a compelling story, and that instinct stands her in good stead here as she weave ...

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is a monumental work, worthy both of Jung Chang’s Mao and of the great, rambling, heterogeneous Chinese folk epics of the oral past, such as The W ...

Outstanding... As with her previous books, most famously Wild Swans, it is Chang’s sympathetic, storyteller’s eye — her attention to deeply human detail during the most extraordinary circumstances — th ...

The Soong sisters were an extraordinary trio… Jung Chang has shown, in books such as Wild Swans, her instinct for a compelling story, and that instinct stands her in good stead here as she weave ...

Books by Jung Chang

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter