Book

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China

By Jung Chang

Vintage, London · Tahun, cetakan, jumlah halaman, dan ISBN eksemplar belum diperiksa. Rujukan pembanding: London: Vintage, 2020, 400 hlm., ISBN 978-1-78470-396-7; edisi pertama London: Jonathan Cape, 2019, ISBN 978-1-910702-78-9 (belum diverifikasi pada halaman hak cipta eksemplar) · Tanpa tahun

Identifier

KBA-BKU-TT-0037

Type

Buku

Publisher

Vintage, London

Date Issued

Tanpa tahun

Bibliographic Citation

Tahun, cetakan, jumlah halaman, dan ISBN eksemplar belum diperiksa. Rujukan pembanding: London: Vintage, 2020, 400 hlm., ISBN 978-1-78470-396-7; edisi pertama London: Jonathan Cape, 2019, ISBN 978-1-910702-78-9 (belum diverifikasi pada halaman hak cipta eksemplar)

Creator

Jung Chang

Subject

Keluarga Soong Soong Ching-ling Soong May-ling Sejarah Tiongkok abad ke-20 Perempuan dan politik Biografi kolektif Kuomintang

LC Classification

DS778.A1 — Biografi kolektif tokoh Tiongkok abad ke-20

LCSH Subject

Soong family Women -- China -- Biography China -- History -- 20th century China -- Politics and government -- 1912-1949

BISAC Category

BIO010000 BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Political

Language

Inggris

Description

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China by Jung Chang is a collective biography of the three Soong sisters, Ai-ling, Ching-ling, and May-ling, whose lives were closely intertwined with the political history of China throughout the twentieth century. The cover of this copy is dominated by deep red with a faint floral brocade fabric pattern across the whole surface. The top band and the bottom of the cover display a Chinese-style textile pattern with chrysanthemum and tendril motifs in cream on red. At the top is printed a note that the author is the author of Wild Swans, followed by the name Jung Chang in large white capital letters. The main title is written in three lines of yellow capital letters, and the subtitle is printed in white serif type. At the bottom is a white-framed black-and-white photograph showing three young women wearing qipao, standing side by side and looking towards the camera. Jung Chang was born in 1952 in Yibin, Sichuan Province, and directly experienced the Cultural Revolution, including becoming a member of the Red Guards as a teenager and working as a peasant, a barefoot doctor, and a factory worker, before studying English at university. In 1978 she moved to Britain and later earned a doctorate in linguistics from the University of York, recorded as one of the first doctorates obtained by a citizen of the People's Republic of China from a British university. Her book Wild Swans, published in 1991, tells the story of three generations of women in her family and became one of the best-selling memoirs about modern China. Together with her husband, the historian Jon Halliday, she wrote the biography Mao: The Unknown Story, published in 2005, which sparked wide debate, and then wrote a biography of the Empress Dowager Cixi in 2013. Her works are banned in mainland China. The book tells the story of the three daughters of Charlie Soong, a businessman and Methodist evangelist who had studied in the United States and became a backer of Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary movement. All three of his daughters were educated in America, something very rare for Chinese women at the beginning of the twentieth century. Ai-ling, the eldest, married the banker and finance official H.H. Kung, and was known as a figure adept at managing money and highly influential behind the scenes. Ching-ling, the middle sister, nicknamed the Red Sister, married Sun Yat-sen despite her family's opposition, and after her husband's death sided with the communists, eventually becoming vice-chair (deputy head of state) of the People's Republic of China. May-ling, the youngest, married Chiang Kai-shek and became Madame Chiang, who appeared on the world stage, including through her speech to the United States Congress during the Second World War, and then spent the rest of her life in Taiwan and the United States. Jung Chang presents the story of the three sisters as a way into reading the history of China from the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the republican revolution, the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and the war against Japan, to the division of China into the People's Republic and the Republic of China on Taiwan. Through the personal relationships, marriages, rivalries, and political loyalties of the three women, the author shows how power in modern China was strongly shaped by family networks and money. The book also highlights the tensions among love, ambition, Christian faith, and ideological choices that often placed the three sisters on opposing sides. The author draws on archives, correspondence, and documents available in Taiwan, the United States, and elsewhere, as well as interviews, to reconstruct their lives. Comparative publication data show that the hardcover edition of the book was first published by Jonathan Cape in London in 2019 with ISBN 978-1-910702-78-9, while the paperback edition was published by Vintage, part of Penguin Random House, in October 2020, at around 400 pages, with ISBN 978-1-78470-396-7. In the United States the book was published by Alfred A. Knopf. The cover format and paper of this copy suggest a paperback edition, but the year, printing, number of pages, and ISBN of the photographed copy still need to be checked against the copyright page. For readers in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, the book is relevant because the political history of twentieth-century China directly affected this region, including the overseas Chinese communities in the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, and Singapore, some of whom became supporters of Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang while others sympathised with the communists. Sun Yat-sen himself raised support among the Chinese in Southeast Asia, and the split between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party also divided Chinese organisations in the region. An understanding of these dynamics helps explain Indonesia's relations with China and Taiwan during the revolution for independence and afterwards. For gender studies and women's history, the book offers an important example of how elite women played a major political role in a society formally dominated by men. The three Soong sisters did not hold the highest offices at the peak of their influence, but they shaped political decisions through marriage, financial networks, diplomacy, and public image. For political anthropology, the story of the Soong family shows the importance of kinship, patronage, and cultural capital, such as foreign education and Christianity, in the formation of modern elites in Asia. As a critical note, a number of historians consider Jung Chang's works, especially the biography of Mao, to be inclined to pass judgement on the figures she studies and at times insufficiently transparent in the use of sources. In this book, some reviewers see the author's sympathies as leaning towards May-ling and her critical stance as very sharp towards Ching-ling and Sun Yat-sen, who have long been glorified in official historiography in both mainland China and Taiwan. Readers are advised to read this book together with other academic studies of the Soong family, the Kuomintang, and the Chinese Communist Party in order to obtain a more balanced picture. Its narrative and readable style makes it an engaging popular read, but for academic purposes its important claims need to be traced back to the sources cited in the notes. The presence of this book in a collection that consists largely of studies of Islam, Aceh, and Southeast Asia also has its own significance. It broadens the comparative horizon, because China's experience of facing colonialism, revolution, civil war, and the formation of a modern state can be set alongside Indonesia's experience in the same period. Questions about the role of elite families, Western education, religion, and women in national politics also arise in Indonesian history, for example in the activities of women figures of the national movement and of aristocratic families who acted as intermediaries between the colonial world and the indigenous world. The book can thus be used in courses on modern Asian history, political sociology, and gender studies as comparative material that enriches analysis. In terms of collection documentation, this copy shows signs of use in the form of spots and small stains, especially on the right centre of the cover near the subtitle, as well as light wear on the edges. No library label is visible on the front cover in this photograph. This note is a curatorial introduction based on the cover and catalogue information, not a summary of the entire contents of the book. Suitable search subjects include the Soong family, Soong Ai-ling, Soong Ching-ling, Soong May-ling, Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, twentieth-century Chinese history, women and politics in Asia, and collective biography. For citation purposes, references should give the author's name, the full title, the publisher, the year, and the pages read directly in the copy.

Rights

Koleksi pribadi KBA13 Academy

Collection

Books