At the age of six, one year earlier than most students, Chang entered the best primary school in Sichuan. Admission was merit-based, but that did not stop the precocious girl’s classmates from calling her “thousand-gold little precious,” insinuating that she received special treatment. In 1962, at the age of 10, she transferred to a new school called “Plane Tree.” This was also a very good school—many provincial officials sent their children there—and it was adjacent to the compound in which her family lived, so Chang never had to venture far from her family’s apartment, which, thanks to her father’s rank, occupied an entire floor of one building. The compound itself featured gardens, shops, and its own entertainment venues. Chang says that she “grew up taking hierarchy and privilege for granted” (244).

Like all Chinese children, Chang was taught that the West was “a miasma of poverty and misery” (246). Foreigners were frightening. So were churches. Her brother Jin-ming, however, took a different view of the world. From scientific magazines, which he devoured, Jin-ming concluded that the West in general, and America in particular, must be very impressive. By the early 1960s, after the Great Leap Forward and ensuing famine, Chang’s parents had mellowed and begun to devote more time to family.