Love Quote by Jung Chang

The politeness here is doing hard political work. Jung Chang starts with a simple writerly desire - to be read - then immediately lays out the logistical workaround: translation, personal involvement, Hong Kong and Taiwan publication, copies slipping across the border. It sounds like book-tour small talk, but it is really a map of sovereignty lines and who gets to control a citizen's imagination.

"I worked on myself" is a pointed credential. Chang isn't letting the censors hide behind the usual excuse that translation distorts; she's asserting authorial fidelity while signaling seriousness to Chinese readers and international observers alike. The subtext: if the state claims the book is "misunderstood", that alibi collapses when the author helped craft the Chinese text.

The final clause, "but it is still banned", lands like a verdict. Structurally, it's a hard stop that turns an anecdote into an indictment: this isn't about distribution challenges; it's about a political system that treats certain narratives as contraband. By mentioning Hong Kong and Taiwan, she also invokes spaces that have historically been freer Chinese-language publics, making the ban feel not merely bureaucratic but ideological - a refusal to allow a shared language to become a shared account of history.

Context matters: Chang's work, especially Wild Swans, is entwined with personal memory and the traumatic, contested story of Mao-era China. The quote frames censorship as the regime's fear of ordinary readers encountering an alternative archive - not in a foreign tongue, but in their own.