Jung Chang was born in Sichuan Province, China in 1952. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) she worked as a peasant, a barefoot doctor, a steelworker and an electrician before becoming an English-language student. In 1978 she moved to Britain and in 1982 became the first person from the People’s Republic of China to earn a PhD from a British university. Wild Swans and her other best-selling book, Mao: The Unknown Story (with Jon Halliday), have been translated into more than 40 languages.