Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

On July 27, 1949, Chang’s mother and father left Jinzhou by train. They disembarked at Tianjin, approximately 250 miles to the southwest, and then continued on foot, over difficult terrain and, with the civil war still raging, under dangerous conditions. In September they finally reached the city of Nanjing, the former Kuomintang capital, 700 miles south of Jinzhou.

At Nanjing, Chang’s mother suffered a miscarriage. On October 1, while she was still recovering in the hospital, she heard the radio broadcast of Mao Zedong declaring the birth of the People’s Republic of China. Chang relates that her mother “cried like a child” at this joyous news (137). Two days later, Chang’s father left Nanjing for his hometown of Yibin. Her mother stayed behind for two months to recuperate. In late December she boarded a steamer and headed west along the great Yangtze River. After 200 miles of traveling only at night, surviving periodic skirmishes with Kuomintang holdouts, and twice switching to smaller boats, she finally reunited with her husband in Yibin in January 1950.