For anyone to open their heart, they need the right atmosphere, and something to prompt them. For my mother it was her trip abroad: she was in a very relaxed, understanding environment. I was very sympathetic towards her.

While I was writing Wild Swans I thought the famine was the result of economic mismanagement but during the research I realised that it was something more sinister.

...boredom was as exhausting as backbreaking labor.

As a child, my idea of the West was that it was a miasma of poverty and misery, like that of the homeless 'Little Match Girl'in the Hans Christian Andersen story. When I was in the boarding nursery and did not want to finish my food, the teacher would say:'Think of all the starving children in the capitalist world!

I was not allowed to take notes but my friend and I memorised those two and a half pages. Most people talked to me because of the warning. They knew this book was not going to be the official line.

Although my book is banned I am still allowed to go to China and travel. There is no longer the kind of control that Mao used to have-there have been deep fundamental changes in society.

If children were brought up to become non-conformists it would only ruin their lives. So parents all over China who loved their children told them to do as Chairman Mao said. It was not possible to tell them anything else.