Wild Swans

7 Pages 1824 Words

arried a man who was an official in the Communist Party. Communism in essence opened up new opportunities for women because of its moral clause, “which, in a radical departure from the past, enjoined that men and women should be equal” (127).
However, this weight on equality usually meant increased problems for women. For example, Bao Qin and her husband traveled together on a 1,000-mile journey with the Communist Army in 1949. Because of his higher rank, her husband rode in a vehicle, but she was forced to walk. Her husband refused to give her a ride “because it would be taken as favoritism” (143). The fact she couldn’t cry at night either is astonishing. The difficulties of the long journey caused Bao Qin to have a miscarriage along the way.
The Japanese had been trying to conquer China for many years and in the mid-1930s they occupied the region that Chang’s mother and grandmother lived. The Japanese were extremely brutal in their treatment of the Chinese. They burned homes and worked people to death. Chang’s mother, a child at the time, experienced some of the brutality of the Japanese oppressor’s first-hand at school. For example, Japanese teachers ...