Jung Chang

Author of the book and the third of the "three swans". She was born Er-hong, named by her grandfather upon learning that he had a granddaughter. She grows up in China amid political unrest that was common through a great deal of the 1900s. Her parents are both high-ranking Communist officials and it's her father's teachings that shape many of her ideas. As a child, she is riding in her father's state-provided car when she sees classmates in the back of a truck. She's embarrassed and her father is pleased that she hasn't taken the privileges of her life for granted.

She spends her teen years forced into an adult role long before she's ready. Both her parents are arrested and held in a prison, leaving Jung and her siblings in the care of their elderly grandmother. Jung and her classmates are soon sent away to peasant...