Jung Chang and Jon Halliday: How They Wrote their Book on Mao

Alister McMillan in the South China Morning Post (7-1-05):

Mobutu Sese Seko became part of the controversial new biography of Mao Zedong during a manicure in Hong Kong. Wild Swans author Jung Chang and her husband, historian Jon Halliday, were reading this newspaper in 1994 when they discovered that the former leader of Zaire - now the Democratic Republic of Congo - was staying in the same hotel, The Regent.

Halliday was keen to interview Mobutu about his struggle against Maoist rebels funded by Beijing. Chang, exhausted by the first year of research for Mao: The Unknown Story," couldn't be bothered". She went to the hotel's hair salon. There she found Mobutu having his nails polished.

"I asked him, 'How was the manicure?'" says Chang."He showed me his hands and said, 'Not too bad'. I was looking at those hands which had apparently strangled his rivals.

"I asked him for the interview. He was completely trapped and said yes."

Chang, 53, and Halliday, 66, went on to interview the Dalai Lama, George Bush senior, Henry Kissinger, Edward Heath and the actor Michael Caine, among others. The 12 years of research caused health problems and delayed the biography they had expected to release in 1995."Every day we lived in excitement at our discoveries," says Chang at The Peninsula hotel.

They decline to name most of the more than 100 members of Mao's inner circle who talked to them for the book, which claims the Great Helmsman was responsible for the deaths of more than 70 million Chinese in peacetime.

While she admits to interviewing people as vicious as Mobutu, Chang says"they were all charming".

"Imelda Marcos batted her eyelids at us and said, 'I can see that this is a perfect combination: the eastern heart and the western intellect. Perhaps you would like to write a book about another third world leader'."

The two authors refuse to reveal how they were given access to official mainland archives, saying only that they had no close shaves with the central government. An official warning to cadres against speaking to Chang and Halliday helped the book, according to the authors. Ageing senior officials were willing to tell the truth about Mao. They recognised that only an important book would encourage an official warning.

Halliday says it helped that his wife's memoir about growing up during the Cultural Revolution and the lives of her mother and grandmother had become the biggest selling paperback ever, with more than 10 million copies printed."People wanted to talk to Jung. They knew from Wild Swans that she was the right person," he says.

Most of the interviews were recorded, says Chang. When the interviewees have passed away and their families are out of danger, Chang and Halliday say transcripts will be made public.

"The warning actually helped open doors," says Chang."When we started in 1993, a lot of Mao's contemporaries were still alive. That was a great help. Also, China has changed sufficiently for people to open up.

"They knew the biography would not be the party line and they knew it would be honest. Older people wanted to talk. They were soon going to die. They had information and they wanted it to be told."

Chang and Halliday are at the start of an Asia-Pacific tour to promote Mao, which has yet to be released in the US but is already the top-selling non -fiction title in Hong Kong, Britain and Australia.

Released in most countries in the week of the anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square crackdown, the couple officially launched the book in Hong Kong days ahead of another significant date, July 1, handover day....