The trains were impossibly crowded, but worth it in order to be able to explore. We travelled by rail to climb many mountains. It transpired that the villa belonged to Mao and you were not allowed to take pictures of it. I was taking a photograph of it when suddenly a man in plain clothes emerged and made me expose my entire camera film - wasting 26 pictures. I remember seeing an amazing villa, built out of rocks so that it seemed to be part of the landscape.
The climate in the province is extremely humid, but once you walk up the mountain, it’s so cool and beautiful. Sometimes it is so cloudy that you cannot see the person you are walking with. We also visited Lushan, a mountain in Jiangxi province that is famous for its clouds. That was until the Cultural Revolution, when, of course, they were burnt.ĭuring the revolution, in 1966, when I was 14, we went on a pilgrimage to Shaoshan to see Mao Tse-tung’s birthplace. Those are the poems I knew, the poems I grew up with. Travel is a key theme of Chinese poetry - the ancients wrote about the great mountains and the rivers, woods, skies and birds. When I was growing up in China, the concept of a holiday didn’t really exist. 'Of all the personal histories to have emerged out of China's twentieth-century nightmare, Wild Swans is the most deeply thoughtful and the most heart-rending I've read.' Spectator 'There has never been a book like this.' Edward Behr, Los Angeles Times.Sunday December 15 2019, 12.01am, The Sunday Times 'Riveting!an extraordinary epic.' Mail on Sunday This is a family memoir that has the breadth of the most enduring social history.' Martin Amis, Independent on Sunday ' Wild Swans made me feel like a five-year-old. 'Immensely moving and unsettling an unforgettable portrait of the brain-death of a nation.' J. It arouses all the emotions, such as pity and terror, that great tragedy is supposed to evoke, and also a complex mixture of admiration, despair and delight at seeing a luminous intelligence directed at the heart of darkness.' Minette Marrin, Sunday Telegraph 'Everything about Wild Swans is extraordinary. 'It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this book.' Mary Wesley
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