Wild swans : three daughters of China / Jung Chang ; [with a new introduction by the author].

Includes index.

"Three-inch golden lilies": Concubine to a warlord general (1909-1933)
"Even plain cold water is sweet": My grandmother marries a Manchu doctor (1933-1938)
"They all say what a happy place Manchukuo is": Life under the Japanese (1938-1945)
"Slaves who have no country of your own": Ruled by different masters (1945-1947)
"Daughter for sale for 10 kilos of rice": In battle for a New China (1947-1948)
"Talking about love": A revolutionary marriage (1948-1949)
"Going through the Five Mountain Passes": My mother's long march (1949-1950)
"Returning home robed in embroidered silk": To family and bandits (1949-1951)
"When a man gets power, even his chickens and dogs rise in heaven": Living with an incorruptible man (1951-1953)
"Suffering will make you a better communist": My mother falls under suspicion (1953-1956)
"After the Anti-Rightist campaign no one opens their mouth": China silenced (1958-1962)
"Capable women can make a meal without food": Famine (1958-1962)
"Thousand-gold little precious": In a privileged cocoon (1958-1965)
"Father is close, Mother is close, but neither is as close as Chairman Mao": The cult of Mao (1964-1965)
"Destroy first, and construction will look after itself": The Cultural Revolution begins (1956-1966)
"Soar to heaven, and pierce the Earth": Mao's Red Guards (June-August 1966)
"Do you want our children to become 'Blacks'?": My parents' dilemma (August-October 1966)
"More than gigantic wonderful news": Pilgrimage to Peking (October-December 1966)
"Where there is a will to condemn, there is evidence": My parents tormented (December 1966-1967)
"I will not sell my soul": My father arrested (1967-1968)
"Giving charcoal in snow": My siblings and my friends (1967-1968)
"Thought reform through labor": To the edge of the Himalayas (January-June 1969)
"The more books you read, the more stupid you become": I work as a peasant and a barefoot doctor (June 1969-1971)
"Please accept my apologies that come a lifetime too late": My parents in camps (1969-1972)
"The fragrance of sweet wind": A new life with The Electricians' Manual and Six Crises (1972-1973)
"Sniffing after foreigners' farts and calling them sweet": Learning English in Mao's wake (1972-1974)
"If this is paradise, what then is hell?": The death of my father (1974-1976)
Fighting to take wing (1976-1978).

A Chinese woman chronicles the struggle of her grandmother, her mother, and herself to survive in a China torn apart by wars, invasions, revolution, and continuing upheaval, from 1907 to the present.