FLY, WILD SWANS: My Mother, Myself and China, by Jung Chang

《飛吧，鴻——我的母親、我自己和中國》(Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China)，張戎著

In February 1988, when Jung Chang was 35 years old, her mother made a visit to London from Chengdu, China, after months spent wrangling the permissions for a travel visa. Chang had been living outside China for nearly a decade, working as a linguist, and left her mother alone during the day with a tape recorder set up at the dining table next to a bouquet of early daffodils.

1988年2月，張戎35歲，母親從中國成都輾轉數月終於辦妥旅行簽證來到倫敦。張戎當時已在海外生活近十年，從事語言學工作。白天她母親一人在家中，家裡一張餐桌上擺好了一台錄音機，旁邊是一束初綻的水仙花。

The older woman spent weeks recounting family stories that spanned nearly a century: invasions, wars, famine. By the end of that summer, she had produced 60 hours of tape covering seven decades of political and social upheaval. It seemed to Chang at the time that her mother “knew writing was where my talent, and my heart, lay, and was encouraging me to fulfill myself by supplying me with material.”

老太太用了數週時間講述跨越近一個世紀的家族故事：入侵、戰爭、饑荒。到那個夏天結束時，她錄製了60小時的錄音，記錄了70年間政治與社會的劇變。張戎當時覺得母親「似乎知道寫作才是我的天賦所在，也是我的心之所向，於是通過提供素材來鼓勵我實現自我價值」。

Over the following decades, Chang went on to become one of the world’s most influential and popular chroniclers of China’s modern history. Her memoir debut, “Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China,” was published in 1991 to international acclaim, eventually selling over 15 million copies in more than 40 languages.

此後數十年間，張戎成為全球最具影響力、最受歡迎的中國近代史撰寫者之一。其回憶錄處女作《鴻——三代中國女人的故事》(Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China) 1991年問世後即獲國際讚譽，最終以40餘種語言發行逾1500萬冊。

“Wild Swans” began with Chang’s grandmother — once a concubine to a Northern Chinese warlord — and recounted her mother’s work as a communist spy, her parents’ life as party officials during the famine of the Great Leap Forward and her own days as a student and Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution.

《鴻》始於張戎的外祖母，她曾是中國北方軍閥的妾室；繼而是她母親作為共產黨間諜的工作經歷、她父母在「大躍進」饑荒期間作為黨的官員的生活，以及她自己在文化大革命期間作為學生和紅衛兵的日子。

Chang’s mother, De-hong, was the linchpin of that book, daring, savvy and warm. “My father’s devotion to communism was absolute,” Chang wrote. De-hong, however, was different. “Her commitment was tempered by both reason and emotion. She gave a space to the private; my father did not.”

張戎的母親德鴻是這本書的關鍵人物，她大膽、精明、熱情。張戎寫道：「父親對共產主義的信仰是絕對的。」但德鴻卻不同。「她的奉獻既有理性也有感性。她為私人情感留有空間，父親則不然。」

Now, Chang has written an epilogue of sorts to “Wild Swans” and to her life’s work. “Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China” operates as several things: an account of her journey as a writer, a chance to correct the record and a paean to her mother. There is little revelation to be found here in Chang’s reflections on modern China, but for those versed in her family history, this updated account is illuminating even as it retreads familiar ground.

如今，張戎為《鴻》和自己一生的創作寫下了一個後記。《飛吧，鴻——我的母親、我自己和中國》有多重含義：既是作家成長曆程的記錄，也是修正歷史的契機，更是對母親的頌歌。儘管張戎對現代中國的反思鮮有新見，但對於那些了解她家族歷史的人來說，這本新書即使是重述熟悉的歷史也會發人深省。

After a brief prologue, the book opens with a swift recap of the events covered in “Wild Swans” and then pivots to Chang’s arrival in London in 1978 at age 26 as a university student — an experience she compares to “landing on Mars.” Despite being heavily chaperoned, Chang tests the boundaries of her freedom there — with the encouragement of her mother, who always seems to know when to push her daughter and when to let her make her own decisions. (She does step in when an early romance threatens to derail Chang’s studies.)

在簡短的序章之後，本書開篇迅速回顧了《鴻》中的事件，隨即轉向張戎1978年26歲時以大學生身份抵達倫敦的經歷——她將此比作「登陸火星」。儘管受到嚴密監護，張戎仍在倫敦不斷試探自由的邊界——這得益於母親的鼓勵。母親似乎總能把握分寸：知道什麼時候應該推動女兒前進，也懂得什麼時候應該放手讓她自主抉擇。（當早年一段戀情險些影響張戎的學業時，母親確實出手干預了。）

Chang continued to research and write after the success of “Wild Swans,” and in this new account she revisits some of the controversy that followed — her assertion, for example, in 2005’s “Mao: The Unknown Story,” which she co-wrote with her Anglo-Irish husband, Jon Halliday, that a particularly famous episode in the Long March, the Battle of Luding Bridge, was not much of a battle at all.

在《鴻》成功後，張戎持續進行研究寫作。新作中她重新審視了隨後的一些爭議——例如她在2005年與英格蘭裔愛爾蘭丈夫喬·哈利戴合著的《毛澤東：鮮為人知的故事》(Mao: The Unknown Story)中提出，長征中著名的瀘定橋戰役其實根本算不上真正的戰鬥。

Meetings and interviews with former Red Guards and party officials stand alongside the events of Chang’s expatriate life: love affairs, struggles with cancer, visits to her mother. Chang is not an overtly introspective memoirist, but she returns frequently to the shifting standards of personal freedom in her own world and the one she left behind. While Chang researched the biography of Mao, she writes, “the regime was of course watching me, but the surveillance was discreet.”

與前紅衛兵和黨的官員的會面和訪談，交織著張戎旅居海外的生活故事：戀情、抗癌歷程、探望母親。張戎並不是一位格外注重反思的回憶錄作家，但她會頻頻回到一個主題，那就是自己所在的世界和她離開的那個世界在個人自由的標準上有何變化。她寫道，在為毛澤東傳記做研究時，「當局當然在監視我，但非常小心翼翼。」

Chang published two more books after “Mao: The Unknown Story,” but these take up only a small part of “Fly, Wild Swans.” The account of her writing life shifts, toward the end of the book, to focus on the increasingly controlling leadership in Beijing. In 2018, President Xi Jinping announced that “slander” of any national heroes could result in imprisonment. Chang began to suspect she was being monitored even outside China.

張戎在《毛澤東：鮮為人知的故事》之後又出版了兩本書，但這些只佔了《飛吧，鴻》的一小部分。書末關於寫作生涯的敘述轉向聚焦北京領導層日益嚴密的控制。2018年，國家主席習近平宣布，「誹謗」民族英雄可能導致牢獄之災。張戎開始懷疑自己在中國境外也受到了監視。

In “Wild Swans,” Chang recounted a delusion her grandmother suffered shortly before her death in 1969, imagining a denunciation meeting in which she recalled being forced to stand on a small table facing an angry crowd. “It was as though,” she writes, “she felt in her own body and soul every bit of the pain that my mother suffered.”

在《鴻》中，張戎講述了外祖母在1969年去世前不久的一次幻覺，她想像自己在一次批判大會上被迫站在一張小桌子上，面對憤怒的人群。她寫道，「彷彿她親身感受到了我母親所承受的每一分痛苦。」

Decades later, facing her own death, Chang’s mother must also consider political realities. In a moment of weakness, De-hong begs her daughter to return to her in China. And then she remembers herself. “Do your own things well and be happy, and I’m happy,” she tells Chang. “Don’t come back for this.”

數十年後，面對死亡，張戎的母親同樣不得不考量政治現實。在一個情緒脆弱的時刻，德鴻懇求女兒回到中國與她團聚。但隨即回過神來。「做好你自己的事，活得開心，我挺好的，」她對張戎說，「別為這事回來。」

FLY, WILD SWANS: My Mother, Myself and China | By Jung Chang | Harper | 336 pp. | $35

《飛吧，鴻——我的母親、我自己和中國》|作者：張戎|出版：Harper| 336頁| 35美元