While history is often used to glean lessons for modern life, Chang says she consciously avoids that approach when working.

They probably found my book difficult because they were not in a position to evaluate all the documents because they are all in Chinese.” “Some reviewers, I feel, are stuck to this old version that she was a diehard despot and that’s because they based their knowledge on general sources and they are not real specialists on her. “In the western world, people know very little about Empress Dowager and the real experts are few,” she says.

While Chinese readers seem to value the fresh insights, western academics accused her of revisionism, suggesting that she had airbrushed many of Cixi’s ruthless and tyrannical tendencies.Ĭhang dismisses these, insisting such reviews reflect an old and less-nuanced view of Chinese history. “During my research, I was astonished repeatedly by her achievement and how she was unjustly treated by history.”Ĭhang’s latest work has divided public opinion. “She outlawed foot-binding and banned medieval forms of punishment such as death by a thousand cuts, and brought women out of their houses and gave them education. “She was the person who brought modernisation to China,” says Chang. Published in 2013, the biography of the 19th century leader sheds light on Cixi’s political cunning and intellect – aspects the writer thinks have been whitewashed by western and Eastern historians. The follow up, 2005's Mao: The Unknown Story, written with her Irish historian husband Jon Halliday, focused on the late Chinese dictator's brutality.Ĭhang returns to the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature this week to discuss her latest work, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China. In it Chang surveyed China's rapid and often violent developments through the eyes of her grandmother, mother and herself. Her debut, the 1992 family memoir Wild Swans, sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. History is the major theme of Chang’s work. Whenever I am working on a book, I often feel like a historical detective.” I love getting things right and going to the archive and digging out bits of material.

While tackling Chinese history and political developments can be daunting even to the most seasoned writers, Chang, 64, says her books are born from questions that snowball into deep investigations. The renowned Chinese author has spent nearly three decades chronicling some of her homeland’s most controversial figures, in addition to writing a best-selling family memoir.Ĭhang is certainly well-versed in the topics she writes about – she was born to parents who were Communist Party officials and she grew up during the disastrous Cultural Revolution. It is the questions rather than the subjects that drive Jung Chang.

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