Jung Chang is the author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Empress Dowager Cixi; and Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister, as well as Mao: The Unknown Story, with her husband, Jon Halliday. She was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China, in 1952, and is the first person from the People's Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British university. She has been awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for services to literature and to history, and lives in London with her husband.