This communism business isn't all it's cracked up to be, is it?! There are many shocking points in this chapter, but the section on page 219 about "thought reform" pretty much came out on top for me. Are you sure we're not reading something Orwellian here? The idea of total state control - including your marital life, free time and thoughts is mind boggling. Especially considering how large a country we are talking about. It's hard enough for Chang's mother to cope with, so there must have been thousands of other stories similar to hers across the country at this time.

I also find it shocking that this is all in recent history, not something from centuries ago.

I found it disturbing how Chang's mother couldn't cope with her newborn baby, but perhaps not that surprising. The lack of support is key to her issues of depression. It sounds as though she was one of very few women to get pregnant and she wasn't allowed anything extra as a result of this. I'm not surprised really that she wanted to leave the baby being cared for elsewhere and get back in the Party's work.  Acceptance into the party is what she's been striving for and she seems to have bitterly resented getting pregnant.

We've known at this point that Chang's father has put his beliefs in the party before his wife and doesn't succumb to "putting love first" but he also ostracises his brother as well. I'm not surprised the two don't ever speak again.

I just find it incredible that a political party can have such a hold over a man. Especially as his actions at this time, have reoccuring affects for Chang's mother for the rest of her life. I'm thinking of the grading system - so she could never have certain luxuries that we would take for granted.

it is absolutely horrible the way that the father puts the Party before his own family consistently and so sad that the children are all pretty much abandoned to be looked after by strangers.....of no fault of the mother who must be in torment especially as the youngest son doesn't even associate her with being his mother and instead bonds with his wet-nurse. The scene where the nurse is forced to leave and walks away from him is heart-renching. Chang's mother has to put up with sooo much it is no wonder that she has her doubts about the Party's best interests and cannot devote her whole being to it as her husband has.....

 Even I'm getting annoyed with the father, and I'm about as left wing as they come.  If his colleagues were supposed to act in his stead then surely there was nothing wrong with the mother getting a lift back from the hospital with them!  Although I can understand why he's so stuck on the rules, we all condemned the familial hierarchical structure described in the early sections, he was just wanting to change what he saw as corrupt.  I wonder how long it'll be though before he realises that it's been replaced with something equally (or more) corrupt.

As for the bonding with the wet nurses, I suppose that happened here too with upper class children being left to be brought up with servants.  Or maybe I just read too many Catherine Cooksons as a teenager!

I think the overriding feeling from this chapter is dispair. For the Party to have the attitude that children should just be sent to nurseries is awful. It is obviously more important that both parents are working for the "greater good" but you have to question - the greater good for who? It certainly isn't for the children. With them screaming and not wanting to go and the fact that Jin-Ming didn't even relate to his mother and had no bond with her. It's heartbreaking for everyone.

When she talked about her parents criticising her gently as if she were an adult that had feelings.  I don't think it's a particularly Chinese thing, certainly when I was growing up in the 80s my family didn't really care about my feelings when they were criticising me.  I think things have changed now though.

firstly in chapter 11 the statement that "throughout chinese history when one person was condemned sometimes the entire (family)- men,women and children, even newborn babies-was executed." How horrrific is this? Newborn babies for fracks sake!!!??!! "someone accussed of a crime could condemn a whole neighbourhood....execution could extend to cousins nine times removed"

Now not being disrespectful but we were taught about the holocaust in history at school but were never been taught this about chinese history and surely this is every bit as inhuman. Know history could not cover everything but this is something I had never previously known and I am waaay beyond shocked and horrified- this was happening only about fifty years ago and yet I had no knowledge of this? How much more of humanity's trangressions against it's own people am I unaware of I wonder? Every time I pick this book up I am thankful of the society I have been born in and equally distressed that more people aren't aware of such events!!! This book should be compulsory in schools, reading this is such an eye-opening experience for me. I could not even comprehend the kind of events being described.

Later in the chapter, for the first time I am made to smile!! The whole story about the grandmother warning the children not to eat orange seeds because an orange tree will sprout from their heads and Chang's confession of illicit orange seed eating and her almost dismay when no orange tree sprouted- even to her concocting potential excuses in her head for when the fateful event occurred. I laughed out loud at the simple innocence she exibted. How many of us were told as children not to eat apple cores because an apple tree would grow in our stomachs? This was a rare and very welcome respite from all the doom and gloom that is prevalent through this part of the book.

Finally in chapter twelve- a segment that summarizes the futillity and stuipidity that communism and especially Mao instigated in his people. It is not enough that the people are beaten and forced to exaggerate about how much food they can produce or that people actually begin to believe that farmers are growing cucumbers half the length of trucks; that the lies being told and believed by the people are resulting in mass exaggeration on a humoungus scale becoming the norm almost like a mass hysteria strain of munchausens disease- now the people are told "(to sit) outside ferociously beating any metal object, from cymbals to saucepans, to scare the sparrows off the trees so they would eventually drop dead from exhaustion." WTF!!??!!!

Is anyone else reminded of Caligula, the Roman emperorer who reputedly tried to make his horse, Incitatus, a consul and a priest.

Mao seems like a total fruit- even though he is blatantly wrong about so much, his party goes out of its way to persecute anyone who tries to reveal the truth and convince the people that he is right regardless of the fact that the man is clearly insane!!! Talk about blindly leading his people into quicksand. I had read a bit about Mao bringing about thousands of deaths through famine in MAO, AN UNTOLD STORY before I gave up on it but had not understood how or why this happened. Now it becomes abundantly clear- the man is an idiot. If it wasn't so shocking, terrifying and tragic it would be hilarious. I am in total shock like totally. The man is so far departed from reality and even those who see this keep quiet for the sake of their families because they know that everyone else will be too scared to support them.  God this book is so deeply intense in a good way, I cannot believe I knew so little about these events and it is rapidly becoming my number one book of the year!!!

I almost don't want to read anymore but with every week and every chapter I feel like I am learning something and I feel as though I am becoming a better person, a better human being for finally learning these things!!!

Chapter 11 is profoundly shocking in many different ways. Mao was obviously fanatical, He seems obsessed with being better than Britain or America and to have everyone enlisted into making steel rather than ensuring the harvests are done and there's enough food for everyone is beggars belief.

I find it amazing that he got away with the exaggerated rhetoric. These impossible fantasies of how much grain people could produce etc. He really capitalised on the fact that the peasants were illiterate and immobile, so therefore no-one knew what anyone else was doing and therefore just felt that they should do whatever they're told to do.

It's a scary thought that all this propaganda and scheming from essentially one man, was able to repress millions of people. Along with millions dying during the famine due to his mismanagement of the country.

I found chapter 12 to be a little lighter after the shock of chapter 11.