A former imperial concubine, this extraordinary woman had seized power through a palace coup after her husband’s death in 1861, whereupon she had begun to bring the medieval country into the modern age. This is as riveting as her earlier books (including ‘The Empress Dowager’), and in some ways, more stunning. Ching-ling, or Red Sister as Chang refers to her, would become the Madame Sun Yat-sen, and later served as vice-chairman to Mao Zedong. Na nieszczęście Charliego wśród ubiegających się o rękę jednej z córek znalazł się największy rewolucjonista kraju. The relationship between them was highly charged emotionally, especially once they had embraced opposing political camps and Ching-ling dedicated herself to destroying her two sisters’ world.

Outside the Bund, the waterfront, under the still gaze of the skyscrapers, numerous sampans rocked with the waves, offering a stirring sight of the city's vitality. The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here.By turns intimate and epic, Jung Chang reveals the lives of three extraordinary women who helped shape twentieth-century China. Little Sister, May-ling, became Madame Chiang Kai-shek, first lady of pre-Communist Nationalist China and a major political figure in her own right. Additional informations are always welcomed and knowing there was a movie adaptation of this history made me want to watch it soon.

Another interesting detail, that ‘classic’ historic narrative about China in 1920s-30s stresses multiple local warlords, which split China. A little oddly for a group biography of three remarkable women, however, the book sometimes veers off into male-dominated accounts of their context. Photograph: Historic Collection/Alamy View image in fullscreen Qingling, Ailing and Meiling Song all played dominant roles in 20th-century Chinese life.

Together, these three extraordinary women helped shape the destiny of the world’s most populous nation from the closing days of the Manchu dynasty to the dawn of China’s ascension into a superpower. Not that they were non-contentious - they were, but they needed each other if only to keep each other close and know who was doing what through all the societal changes that happened during their lifetimes. Years ago I read Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady which, overall, paints a very different picture of "Little Sister". In Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister, the acclaimed Chinese-British historian Jung Chang tells their story with compassion and an obsessive attention to historical fact.