Jung Chang: ‘Most Chinese people in my generation experienced starvation. You could feel it around you’

The Wild Swans author discusses China, London and her indomitable mother

I meet Jung Chang between lockdowns – our lunch is the first time she has eaten out since the spring. “I feel liberated!” she says, a phrase that means more to her than most.

We are at e&o, a pan-Asian restaurant in Notting Hill, around the corner from where she lives with her husband, historian Jon Halliday. Like anyone who has read Chang’s book Wild Swans– 13 million copies sold – I feel as though I know her before she sits down, so unforgettable and harrowing is her account of growing up in Mao’s China. There are many ways of telling that story. As we order – she directs me toward the dim sum, her husband’s favourite – I ask if any particular food is evocative for her of that coming of age, and she talks me through some of that history.

I’ve been cooking every day in lockdown. Very simple things. A lot of vegetables