Mao History

When I was at the airport yesterday on my way to Charlotte, I picked up a book that I had seen before and was eager to get my hands on. Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday.



I had read Jung Chang's other famous book, Wild Swans, while I was in Japan. That was about the time, or shortly after I made a journey to China with my sibblings. While naturally I would have loved to have spent more time in China, I became intrigued by several aspects of the Chinese culture. I had known little about Mao at the time, the standard facts from high school history books. This figure supposedly responsible for the deaths of millions, and yet the line to view his cryonically frozen body in Tiananmen Square by admirers was too long to consider making the visit even though I wanted to. Perhaps my motivation was different from theirs.

Wild Swans was banned in China as is this new critical book. Does the average Chinese person know their country's history from the Western perspective? I would guess not. Is this book a fair representation of what took place and exactly how accurate does it depict Mao's role in the millions of deaths caused by famine? The debate continues, but with a decade of research of Jung and her husband/co-author, it will make for an interesting read.