Join us at Asia Society⁠ for a special conversation with Jung Chang, the internationally acclaimed author of the multimillion-copy bestseller Wild Swans, as she discusses her powerful new memoir, Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself, and China (Harper, January 2026). Moderated by New Yorker staff writer Jiayang Fan, this event offers a rare opportunity to hear from one of the most influential chroniclers of modern Chinese history and memory.

In Fly, Wild Swans, Chang returns to the themes that made Wild Swans a landmark work, while charting a deeply personal new chapter. The memoir intertwines two lives separated by geography but bound by history: Chang’s own journey after leaving China in 1978 to begin a new life abroad, and the story of her mother, who remained behind as China entered a period of profound transformation. Across continents and decades, mother and daughter navigate distance, longing, and the lasting emotional consequences of political upheaval.

With her signature clarity and narrative force, Chang reflects on exile, belonging and the enduring pull of home. The book mirrors the ups and downs of China’s transformation from an isolated state to a world power, illuminating the human dimensions of China’s dramatic social and political changes in the late twentieth century. Through personal memory and historical reflection, Fly, Wild Swans explores what it means to leave a country without ever fully leaving its past behind.

Copies of Fly, Wild Swans will be on sale, with the author available to sign them.

Jung Chang is the bestselling author of Wild Swans, Mao: the Unknown Story (co-written with Jon Halliday), Empress Dowager Cixi, Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister, and most recently Fly, Wild Swans (2026). She was born in China in 1952, moved to England in 1978, and has been awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for services to literature and history. She lives in London with her husband.

Jiayang Fan is a Chinese-American journalist and staff writer for The New Yorker since 2016. She was born in Chongqing and immigrated to the United States at the age of seven. Her works include cultural and political commentary, personal history, and food critique. She published her first book Motherland in 2024.