Jung Chang and Jon Halliday were in Jakarta on July 9 as part of a global book tour to launch Mao: The Unknown Story (Jonathan Cape, June 2, 2005), which shatters the cult image surrounding the 20th-century Chinese leader, at the Periplus Bookshop in Kemang, South Jakarta. The Jakarta Post interviewed the authors on their journey into uncovering the man behind the myth.

Investigative scholars shatter myth of Mao

Chisato Hara The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

The in-store cafe and extra chairs set out in the Periplus Bookshop are full, and standing guests line the magazine rack to the rear or around book displays. At least half of the audience is of Chinese ethnic origin, many of whom look to be in their 60s to 70s. Shoppers from the nearby Hero supermarket stop by after their errands, and guests keep trickling in throughout the launch, which also marked the release of the Bahasa Indonesia version of Jung Chang's Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, or Angsa-Angsa Liar, a memoir of her upbringing in Mao's China that took the literary scene by storm in 1991.

The launch and Q&A session run almost an hour overtime as the questions keep coming from enthusiastic fans, and the authors consider each one equally, even those that border on academic debate. It is clear readers feel close to Chang because of Wild Swans, and one asks, "How is your mother?"

"She is well, thank you. She is still in China, in Sichuan. She prefers to live there," answered Chang.

The cashier's till dings in succession as guests purchase Mao: The Unknown Story, Wild Swans or both for an autograph. One old woman clutches her signed copy to her breast as she leaves the store.

It is now late afternoon, and Jung Chang is sitting back in an armchair in her hotel room, wearing a tunic-and-trouser set in mint, with a deep teal silk shawl around her shoulders.

She has not been feeling well today, suffering from some kind of stomach ailment -- the hotel doctors have been called, and are due to arrive in 30 minutes or so. Another interview is to follow straight afterward, and she and her British co-author husband, Jon Halliday, are due to fly to Singapore the following morning on the next leg of their book tour.

Chang has a mellow voice that resonates with animation as soon as she begins to speak, and readers of Wild Swans would recognize the precision and evocative quality of her narration.

"Mao seemed the obvious subject... (since) he dominated my own life and dominated China," Chang replied as to her choosing a biography on Mao Zedong to follow up her memoir.

The couple has spent the 12 years since the publication of Wild Swans researching Mao exhaustively across China and through various archives -- including the Russian Foreign Ministry archives and the independent Communist International (Comintern) archives in Moscow -- and in speaking to over 150 people who had direct contact with him, from his personal laundry-woman to former world leaders.

"We went for primary sources," emphasized Chang, "and used secondary sources only if they were verifiable."

While much literature exists on the statesman who was instrumental in bringing China into the modern era, Chang felt that "it seemed the world didn't know him ... He hadn't penetrated into the consciousness of the general public, although he was as evil as Hitler or Stalin... He was responsible for the deaths of at least 70 million of his countrymen during his rule".

Halliday added, "To be fair, earlier biographers didn't have access to the material we had... But it's also about asking the right questions. How did he hold cabinet meetings? Discussions? For example, they don't describe how he made decisions when he was in power."

This is the second husband-wife collaboration after Mme Sun Yat-sen (Penguin, 1986), and the historian-linguist partnership "worked very well", said Chang, who holds a doctorate in linguistics and was the China section director for external services at the University of London's renowned School of Oriental and African Studies. There, she taught Mandarin and Chinese culture to businessmen and correspondents, such as those from Reuters, but mostly British diplomats, for posts in China.

Halliday's background lies in the Classics department at Oxford, where he focused on Ancient History, along with Ancient Greek and Latin philosophy. But he is no stranger to modern Asia, and has published books on the Korean War and modern Japan. His fluency in several languages, particularly Russian, and his research for The Artful Albanian: Memoirs (Chatto & Windus, 1986) on Stalinist leader and co-author Enver Hoxha, also proved invaluable for Mao.

But it was Wild Swans that opened many doors to Chang and Halliday. The book is banned in China, "But I'm happy that a pirated Chinese version found its way in -- I know, because a friend brought me back a copy," laughed Chang. "So people had read Wild Swans and knew the kind of book I wanted to write about Mao." If they hadn't, Chang was ready with a copy as introduction to potential interviewees.

Inadvertently, the Chinese government had also aided their course: "(The government) had warned Mao's inner circle not to cooperate with us, but this had an adverse effect, because the warning let them know that this was not going to be a party-line book. They knew it was an important book..." She also found that most of the interviewees, after so many years of silence, were willing and more than eager to tell their tales.

Mao also attempts to go beyond a mere biography, as Chang had a vision to explain 20th-century Chinese history in a comprehensive manner through Mao and his relentless, pitiless pursuit of personal power.

"He was heartless. He cared about nothing," she stressed. To illustrate, she relates the life of Mao's second wife, Yang Kaihui, who bore him two sons, and whom Mao abandoned to destitution. She was eventually executed by the Nationalists for her previous connection to Mao.

At the same time, however, "Mao understood human emotions very well", said Chang, but even this insight was used to propel himself toward his ultimate goal of world domination.

The authors found that he also identified with disgraced leaders, and felt an affinity with former U.S. president Richard Nixon and even his archrival, Chiang Kai-shek -- not because of empathy, but because of his own fear of being deposed.

"In his last days, the most dominant emotion was self-pity -- because he didn't achieve world domination," said Chang.

Her most shocking discovery was that the Great Famine of 1958- 1961, during which 38 million Chinese people perished, was not due to economic mismanagement as she had long believed: Mao had calculated the deaths into his economic policy.

By the end of their investigation, she came to the realization that Mao was "far worse than I had thought".

Even so, Chang does not appear to hold any personal animosity toward Mao, and the most palpable emotion she and Halliday seem to share is a blend of academic objectivity and scholarly passion.

"The research was exciting in itself. And discovering new material ... (like) finding the manuscript written by Mao's second wife and making historical discoveries. For example, in the war against Japan, (that) Mao used the Japanese to destroy Chiang Kai-shek," she said.

Halliday interjects politely and is careful to specify that, while Yang's manuscript was not a state secret, its existence was certainly "kept secret" by the government.

The authors are modest about their monumental biography, which TIME magazine referred to as "an atom bomb of a book" (June 13, 2005), and luck also played its part: "We were lucky the Russian archives were opened after the fall of Communism," said Halliday.

"We set out to write a truthful book that could stand against the strictest critics, a biography with a great narrative drive," said Chang. "And we were lucky because Mao's life was full of drama."

How do they feel about their achievement? "We are very pleased," she said. Chang is currently translating Mao into Chinese, and hopes it will be available in China -- but no word on this has been forthcoming thus far.

There is a knock on the door, and two doctors enter. Chang excuses herself, extending her thanks for the interview, and retires to an adjoining room.

"As a historian, (Mao) was a terrific subject," said Halliday. "He led an incredibly interesting life ... (Researching the book) was also a historian's dream. We made huge discoveries, accessed thousands of pages never seen before ... It was as exciting as we could hope for." He is also ecstatic about the journey they made through China: "With Jung, I was able to travel to remote locations which otherwise would have been closed to me."

Earlier, when asked as to why the authors had agreed to a launch in Indonesia, Chang had replied, "Because of the intelligent and widely read Indonesian readership" and the historical connection the country holds with China.

Halliday now elucidates that Mao had an intimate relationship with Indonesia, and was actually behind the 1965 Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) coup.

"Wild Swans was a big hit in Japan, and (Japanese Communist Party/JCP leader) Nosaka Sanzo and his wife loved the book." They welcomed the authors eagerly, and Nosaka moved to authorize the release of the transcripts of former JCP leader Miyamoto Kenji's conversations with Mao about the 1965 coup. In addition, one of their interviewees was Jusuf Adjitorop, possibly the only surviving senior member of the PKI, who resides in China where he was at the time of the coup.

"The Chinese government has released many transcripts of Mao's conversations with foreign leaders. It's just a suggestion, but it would be interesting, since he is going to China, if President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono could ask them to release the transcripts between Mao and (then PKI leader) Aidit," he said.