Jung Chang was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China, in 1952. She was a red guard briefly at the age of fourteen and then worked as a peasant, a 'barefoot doctor', a steelworker, and an electrician before becoming an English language student and, later, an assistant lecturer at Sichuan University. She left China for Britain in 1978 and was subsequently awarded a scholarship by York University, where she obtained a Ph.D. in linguistics in 1982 - the first person from the People's Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British University. Jung Chang lives in London and teaches the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. Her award-winning book, Wild Swans, was published in 1991. With her husband, Jon Halliday, she is also the author of Mao: The Unknown Story (2005, nonfiction). [Source][1] [1]: http://www.harpercollins.com.au/authors/50000269/Jung_Chang/index.aspx?authorID=50000269