69 Quotes by 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.

If you have love, even plain cold water is sweet.

My mother could see that as far as my father’s relationship with the Party was concerned, she was an outsider. One day, when she ventured some critical comments about the situation and got no response from him, she said bitterly, “You are a good Communist, but a rotten husband!” My father nodded. He said he knew.

I could understand ignorance, but I could not accept its glorification, still less its right to rule.

She was a pious Buddhist and every day in her prayers asked Buddha not ro reincarnate her as a woman. “Let me become a cat or dog, but not a woman,” was her constant murmur as she shuffled around the house, oozing apology with every step.

I think because of their terrible past, particularly this century, the Chinese have come to accept cruelty more than many other people, which is something I feel very unhappy about.

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.

Few of her achievements have been recognised, and when they are, the credit is invariably given to the men serving her. This is largely due to a basic handicap: that she was a woman and could only rule in the name of her sons... In terms of groundbreaking achievements, political sincerity and personal courage, Empress Dowager Cixi set a standard that has barely been matched.

They were endowed with the qualities of youth- they were rebellious, fearless, eager to fight for a ‘just cause’, thirsty for adventure and action. They were also irresponsible, ignorant, and easy to manipulate- and prone to violence. Only they could give Mao the immense force that he needed to terrorize the society.