Quotes from Jung Chang

I do not agree with the view that to be moral, the motive of one's action has to be benefiting others. Morality does not have to be defined in relation to others … People like me want to … satisfy our hearts to the full, and in doing so we automatically have the most valuable moral codes. Of course there are people and objects in the world, but they are all there only for me.

Long-lasting peace … is unendurable to human beings, and tidal waves of disturbance have to be created in this state of peace … When we look at history, we adore the times of war when dramas happened one after another … which make reading about them great fun. When we get to the periods of peace and prosperity, we are bored … human nature loves sudden swift changes.

When boys played "guerrilla warfare," which was their version of cowboys and Indians, the enemy side would have thorns glued onto their noses and say "hello" all the time.

from 'officials', who held more senior positions. The

Apesar de sua vida ter sido de sofrimento e angústia, suas histórias nunca foram insuportáveis nem deprimentes. Tinham alicerces numa força moral que era o tempo todo alentadora.

sitting happiness in...

The Japanese are a disease of the skin...the Communists are a disease of the heart. Everything personal was political... Two reds sandwiching a black...

The whole nation slid into doublespeak. Works became divorced from reality, responsibility, and people's real thoughts. Lies were told with ease because words had lost their meanings-and had ceased to be taken seriously by others.

Instead of sniping at her like Mrs. Mi, Mrs. Ting let my mother do all sorts of things she wanted, like reading novels: before, reading a book without a Marxist cover would bring down a rain of criticism about being a bourgeois intellectual.

Fallowing the custom, my great-grandfather was married young, at fourteen, to a woman six years his senior. It was considered one of the duties of a wife to help bring up her husband.

There were no state regulations about hairstyles or clothes. It was what everyone else was wearing that determined the rules of the day. And because the range was so narrow, people were always looking out for the tiniest variations. It was a real test of ingenuity to look different and attractive, and yet similar enough to everyone else so that nobody with an accusing finger could pinpoint what exactly was heretical.

mosquito-netted open windows was an enormous privilege. 'You must not think you are superior to them,' he would say. 'You are just

carpetbaggers

I had experienced privilege as well as denunciation, courage as well as fear, seen kindness and loyalty as well as depths of human ugliness. Amid suffering, ruin and death, I had above all known love and the indestructible human capacity to survive and to pursue happiness.

Cixi's tolerance of attacks on her government-and on herself-as well as her willingness to permit a diversity of viewpoints were rematched by any of her predessors or, arguably, her successors.

In league with a general called Feng Yuxiang, a Christian warlord, who entered legend by baptizing his troops en masse with a firehose

The idea was that everything personal was political; in fact, henceforth nothing was supposed to be regarded as 'personal' or private.

Poverty drove their parents to have them castrated as young children, hoping they would earn a better living at court. Usually the father would take the boy to a specialist castrator, who operated by the appointment of the court. After a contract was signed, absolving the castrator from any responsibility in case of death or failure (both highly likely outcomes), the unimaginably painful operation was performed. The castrator's fee was huge and had to be paid from future earnings.

The old man, who shuffled along with great difficulty, bent double, was blind. To attract the attention of passersby,he sang a heart wrenching tune. Every time my father heard the song, he said to himself that society must change.

Sem educação, o mundo dos camponeses era dolorosamente estreito. Suas conversas em geral se concentravam em detalhes miúdos do dia-a-dia.

Unlike most founding dictators—Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler—Mao did not inspire a passionate following through his oratory, or ideological appeal. He simply sought willing recruits among his immediate circle, people who would take his orders.

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.

Meetings were an important means of Communist control. They left people no free time, and eliminated the private sphere. The pettiness which dominated them was justified on the grounds that prying into personal details was a way of ensuring thorough soul-cleansing. In fact, pettiness was a fundamental characteristic of a revolution in which intrusiveness and ignorance were celebrated, and envy was incorporated into the system of control.

A cautionary tale I had carried with me from China, and which I firmly believed, was that anyone who attempted to have a foreign lover would be drugged and carted back to China in a jute sack.