"If you have love, even plain cold water is sweet."
"The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. But I wondered how many of their tears were genuine. People had practiced acting to such a degree that they confused it with their true feelings."
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Source: Jung Chang (2003). “Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China”, p.518, Simon and Schuster
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"While I was writing Wild Swans I thought the famine was the result of economic mismanagement but during the research I realised that it was something more sinister."
"As a child, my idea of the West was that it was a miasma of poverty and misery, like that of the homeless 'Little Match Girl'in the Hans Christian Andersen story. When I was in the boarding nursery and did not want to finish my food, the teacher would say:'Think of all the starving children in the capitalist world!"
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