Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is a gripping story of love, war, intrigue, bravery, glamour and betrayal, which takes us on a sweeping journey from Canton to Hawaii to New York, from exiles’ quarters in Japan and Berlin to secret meeting rooms in Moscow, and from the compounds of the Communist elite in Beijing to the corridors of power in democratic Taiwan. In a group biography that is by turns intimate and epic, Jung Chang reveals the lives of three extraordinary women who helped shape twentieth-century China. If you know anything at all about China, reading this book will fill in a lot of very interesting gaps. I studied Chinese history for six years, and so much for what Jung Chang has laid out here about these important sisters simply wasn't in the books. But DON'T listen to this reading of it. Joanna David has not been drilled in Chinese pronunciation, and even some English words are strangely beyond her, especially 'surveillance' and 'surveilling', which she pronounces as 'surveyance' and 'surveying'. She is simply out of her depth, and doesn't sound confident, even though the writing is. All three sisters enjoyed tremendous privilege and glory, but also endured constant mortal danger. They showed great courage and experienced passionate love, as well as despair and heartbreak. They remained close emotionally, even when they embraced opposing political camps and Ching-ling dedicated herself to destroying her two sisters' worlds.

A major new biography from the internationally bestselling author of Wild Swans, Mao and Empress Dowager Cixi: a gripping story of sisterhood, revolution and betrayal, and three women who helped shape the course of modern Chinese history. Red Sister, Ching-ling, married the ‘Father of China’, Sun Yat-sen, and rose to be Mao’s vice-chair. Chang’s early insertions of Mao into the narrative are there for the sake of fact and transparency (which is what makes her such a celebrated historian), but because of just who Mao is, they have the added effect of foreshadowing a villain, like those fleeting moments in a horror film where something unknown darts past the camera.Yg bagus dari buku ini adalah author sebisa mungkin obyektif terhadap tokoh-tokoh yg ditulisnya ini. Krn semua tokohnya juga sudah meninggal, author mengumpulkan data dari buku-buku, epistolary (korespondensi) yg dilakukan mereka kpd teman-teman terdekat mereka, sehingga kita diberi cukup banyak ttg pandangan mereka ttg Cina dan ideologi mereka yg bertentangan. Juga motif-motif kenapa mereka tetap mempertahankan pendirian mereka. Secara pribadi, saya paling menyukai Ai Ling yg sangat brilian dlm ide-ide mencari uang dan pandangannya ttg keluarga. Saya juga lebih menyukai May-Ling, walau terkesan "manja" dibandingkan saudarinya yg lain, May-Ling justru yg paling baik hati, paling bisa beradaptasi dan paling beruntung. Saya justru kurang suka dgn Ching-Ling (pdhl ini adalah favorit almarhumah mama saya) krn menurut saya dia terlalu idealis dan romantis sekaligus terlalu subyektif.

This is what makes this book such an enormous success: that it reads like a biographical novel, with political change at the forefront and character narratives existing upstage. Each chapter focusses on a shift in power that is equal parts personal and political, and the Soong sisters are always there but rarely at the forefront, at least until the book’s final third. Ei-ling, the eldest daughter, worked as Sun Yat-sen’s secretary but rebuffed his advances. She went on to marry H.H. Kung, a wealthy businessman who would later become Chiang Kai-shek’s finance minister. Ching-ling, or Red Sister as Chang refers to her, would become the Madame Sun Yat-sen, and later served as vice-chairman to Mao Zedong. Little Sister May-ling would become Madame Chiang Kai-shek, and, arguably, one of the most notable sisters for her contributions to the war efforts against Japan, her publicized mission in the United States, and her crucial role to Chiang Kai-shek as an interpreter during post-WW2 peace talks.A story of love, war, intrigue, bravery, glamour and betrayal. Asian Art Newspaper, *Books of the Year* The lives, deeds, and triumphs of these three sisters are nothing less than phenomenal. And the fact that I – and likely countless others – had never even known of their existence is a crying shame. But Jung Chang is here to fix that. Through Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister she has proven the importance and consequence of women in revolutionary China. Big Sister, Ei-ling, became Chiang’s unofficial main adviser – and made herself one of China’s richest women. Given the three Soong sisters’ existence in the shadows of history, and the staggering might of the men they worked and lived alongside, it was narratively clever of Chang to replicate this tone in her own narrative through Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister.

The Soong sisters came from a world of privilege—they had every comfort they could want and were the first Chinese women to be educated at American universities. They even spoke English more comfortably than their native tongues. What set them on their paths to destiny was perhaps their father’s love for the country. By quietly funding Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary schemes to democratize China, Charlie Soong inadvertently introduced his daughters to the world of politics. The book intertwines the intimate with the big historical picture, tying their personal stories to the deep and irreconcilable political divisions among them . . . it is stamped by her revisionist impulse.” — The Atlantic With these health warnings in place: where it really succeeds for me is with the framing of the narrative by the lifetime of the three sisters. With Mei-ling being the last to pass away in 2003, it moves beyond the stopping points of traditional histories. For Chinese history this can often mean 1949 when the communists took power. But Chang diverts us to Taiwan where Mei-ling lived with Chiang Kai-shek and gives us an insight into another 50 years of fascinating changes that are very relevant to the headlines today. A remarkable story of war, communism and espionage related with nuanced sympathy... The lives of the three Song sisters – the subjects of Jung Chang’s spirited new book – are more than worthy of an operatic plot. Julia Lovell, GuardianOutstanding... As with her previous books, most famously Wild Swans, it is Chang’s sympathetic, storyteller’s eye — her attention to deeply human detail during the most extraordinary circumstances — that makes her work remarkable. Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is another triumph. William Moore, Evening Standard Written in biographical style the book explains all of the key historical events as the outcome of personal decisions. Three daughters of Charlie Soong are introduced and their lives and impacts on society skillfully unfolded for a neophyte reader on this topic. Author Jung Chang does a clear and compelling job at showing how their parents' and their childhood in various places informed life choices, while keeping the threads of family bonds in place no matter how far they traveled. Not that they were non-contentious - they were, but they needed each other if only to keep each other close and know who was doing what through all the societal changes that happened during their lifetimes.