Jung Chang

Jung Chang was born in Sichuan Province, China in 1952. During the Cultural Revolution she worked as a peasant, a ‘barefoot’ doctor, a steelworker, and an electrician before becoming an English-language student at Sichuan University. She left China for Britain in 1978 and obtained a PhD in Linguistics in 1982 at the University of York – the first person from Communist China to receive a doctorate from a British university. 

She is the author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (1991), which has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. She wrote a ground-breaking trilogy of the history and personalities of modern China: Mao: The Unknown Story (2005, with Jon Halliday); Empress Dowager Cixi (2013); and Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister (2019). Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages.  She has been awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for services to literature and to history. Her latest memoir Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China was published by William Collins in September 2025. She lives in London.