Chang's grandmother is taken as a concubine by a warlord general at the age of 15.

Chang's grandmother flees a warlord's country estate with her infant daughter and returns to Yixian.

Chang's grandmother and Dr. Xia marry despite his eldest son dying by suicide in protest.

Chang's mother is imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the Kuomintang, deepening her commitment to the Communist cause.

Chang's mother helps smuggle detonators into a Kuomintang ammunition depot, enabling the Communist takeover of Jinzhou.

Chang's mother hears Mao declare the People's Republic while recovering from a miscarriage in a Nanjing hospital.

Jung Chang is born in Yibin to two Communist Party officials.

Chang's mother is detained at her workplace for six months as a suspected hidden counterrevolutionary.

Mao's Great Leap Forward triggers a famine that kills tens of millions, including some of Chang's relatives.

Mao's class education campaign turns Chang and millions of Chinese children into fervent Mao worshippers.

Chang's father is denounced at a mass meeting and taken into custody as a capitalist-roader.

Rebel factions burn Chang's father's book collection, and Chang sees her father weeping for the first time.

Chang's father shouts at a denunciation meeting that he opposes the Cultural Revolution even if Mao leads it.

Chang's grandmother dies of extreme stress and heartbreak caused by the persecution of her daughter.

Chang leaves Peking for Great Britain, having won one of the first merit-based scholarships to study in the West.

Wild Swans traces three generations of a Chinese family against the backdrop of twentieth-century upheaval, from warlordism to Mao's Communist rule. Chang's grandmother escapes concubinage and finds love with a kindly doctor, while her daughter grows up under Japanese occupation before joining the Communists in their civil war against the Kuomintang. Jung Chang is born into a family of Party officials and enjoys a sheltered childhood, but Mao's campaigns—the Great Leap Forward, mass indoctrination, and the Cultural Revolution—systematically destroy her family's security. Her parents are persecuted as capitalist-roaders, her grandmother dies of grief, and her father is driven to mental collapse before dying of a heart attack. Slowly, Chang awakens from her Maoist indoctrination and develops a fierce longing for knowledge and freedom, ultimately winning a scholarship to study in Great Britain.

The headline events that shaped three generations of women in Mao's China.

Chang's grandmother has her feet broken and bound at age two to make her more attractive for marriage.

Dr. Xia's eldest son dies by suicide to protest his father's planned marriage to Chang's grandmother.

The Xia family hides Miss Tanaka, the only kind Japanese teacher, from violent reprisals after Japan's surrender.

Chang's mother decides to join the Communist cause after hearing her admired cousin Hu has been captured and executed.

Chang's parents fall in love while on a joint mission to shore up Communist support in Harbin.

Chang's father returns to his hometown of Yibin as its highest-ranking Communist administrator.

Mrs. Zhang Xi-ting attempts to seduce Chang's father, who rejects her and promptly moves his family to Chengdu.

Chang's mother defies pressure to name quota-filling rightists during Mao's Anti-Rightist Campaign, risking her own standing with the Party.

Chang joins the Red Guards and participates in forcibly shutting down a neighborhood teahouse.

Chang's mother secures a written order from Premier Zhou Enlai in Peking for Chang's father's release from detention.

Chang forges residency documents with a young man named Wen to escape permanent assignment to a remote rural commune.

Chang visits her father at the remote Miyi detention camp and stays three months to help his recovery.

The Ting faction falls victim to Mao's latest purge, and conditions at the Miyi detention camp improve.

Chang's mother persuades Party officials to issue an appropriate, non-condemnatory memorial statement for her husband's funeral.

The Communist Party posthumously declares Chang's father a good official and good Party member, fully clearing his name.

Alongside the headline events of Wild Swans lie numerous pivotal moments that shaped the lives of Chang's family in equally powerful ways. Chang's grandmother suffered foot-binding in childhood before her family became entangled in the chaos of Japanese occupation, with moments of unexpected kindness—like hiding a sympathetic Japanese teacher—punctuating the horror. Chang's parents' love story was bound up with political loyalty, from falling for each other on a Communist mission to navigating the Party's intrusive demands on their marriage and careers. The Cultural Revolution scattered the family and forced Chang to make difficult choices to survive, including forging documents and travelling to remote detention camps to care for her parents. By the time the Maoist era ended, Chang's mother worked tirelessly to protect her children's futures, securing her husband's reputation and clearing the path for Chang to pursue her dreams abroad.

The significant secondary moments that shaped the story's three generations.

General Xue gives Chang's grandmother her freedom on his deathbed, allowing her to begin a new life.

Chang's mother watches a classmate tortured and executed by firing squad for possessing a banned book.

Chang's mother uses her connection to Kuomintang colonel Hui-ge to carry out dangerous intelligence missions for the Communists.

Chang's mother demands a divorce from her hospital bed after her husband refuses to let her ride in his jeep.

Chang's father refuses to allow Dr. Xia a traditional Buddhist funeral, triggering Chang's grandmother's nervous breakdown.

Mao's Hundred Flowers campaign lures thousands of intellectuals into speaking openly, then has them purged as rightists.

Mao circulates Marshal Peng's criticisms of the Great Leap Forward as a loyalty trap, and Chang's father warns his wife.

On a Red Guard pilgrimage, Chang discovers Mao's parents were wealthy and immediately suppresses the dangerous thought.

Chang catches only a fleeting glimpse of Mao at Tiananmen Square and briefly contemplates suicide in despair.

Chang's father refuses the Tings' offer to join the new Revolutionary Committee and instead mails a letter to Chairman Mao.

Chang is turned away while delivering food to her detained mother, and her grandmother faints fearing her daughter is dead.

Chang learns her grandmother has died while returning from the trip to forge her residency documents in Ningnan.

Chang reads the U.S. Declaration of Independence in the university library and mentally challenges Mao for the first time.

Mao dies, and Chang publicly pretends to sob while feeling inward joy at the news.

Chang aces the scholarship examination, earning one of the first merit-based opportunities for a Chinese student to study in the West.

Wild Swans is built on a series of turning points that gradually dismantled blind faith in authority and opened eyes to the truth about Mao's China. Chang's grandmother's life was transformed by small acts of liberation—receiving freedom on a deathbed, choosing love over convention—while Chang's mother was politicized by witnessing Kuomintang brutality and radicalized into working against them. As Communist rule tightened, Mao repeatedly deceived his own people, from the Hundred Flowers trap to the loyalty tests of the Great Leap Forward, and Chang's parents slowly recognized the regime's cruelty. During the Cultural Revolution, Chang herself experienced moments of dawning clarity—discovering Mao's privileged origins, feeling the programmed despair of barely glimpsing him, and reading forbidden Western ideas that cracked her indoctrination open. The death of Mao and the promise of a scholarship to the West marked the end of one era and the beginning of another, as Chang prepared to leave behind the country she had finally learned to question.