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Overview
Colors of the Mountain is a classic story of triumph over adversity, a memoir of a boyhood full of spunk, mischief, and love, and a welcome introduction to an amazing young writer.Da Chen was born in 1962, in the Year of Great Starvation. Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution engulfed millions of Chinese citizens, and the Red Guard enforced Mao's brutal communist regime. Chen’s family belonged to the despised landlord class, and his father and grandfather were routinely beaten and sent to labor camps, the family of eight left without a breadwinner. Despite this background of poverty and danger, and Da Chen grows up to be resilient, tough, and funny, learning how to defend himself and how to work toward his future. By the final pages, when his says his last goodbyes to his father and boards the bus to Beijing to attend college, Da Chen has become a hopeful man astonishing in his resilience and cheerful strength.
Synopsis
Colors of the Mountain is a classic story of triumph over adversity, a memoir of a boyhood full of spunk, mischief, and love, and a welcome introduction to an amazing young writer.
Da Chen was born in 1962, in the Year of Great Starvation. Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution engulfed millions of Chinese citizens, and the Red Guard enforced Mao's brutal communist regime. Chen’s family belonged to the despised landlord class, and his father and grandfather were routinely beaten and sent to labor camps, the family of eight left without a breadwinner. Despite this background of poverty and danger, and Da Chen grows up to be resilient, tough, and funny, learning how to defend himself and how to work toward his future. By the final pages, when his says his last goodbyes to his father and boards the bus to Beijing to attend college, Da Chen has become a hopeful man astonishing in his resilience and cheerful strength.
Publishers Weekly
The grandchild of a former landlord—China's most spat-upon class after the Revolution—Chen was regularly beaten to a pulp by other children and, despite performing at the top of his class, repeatedly denied the right to continue at school. His family of nine—including his brother, three sisters, grandparents and parents—subsisted on moldy yams alone for entire winters. Meanwhile, his grandfather was attacked randomly by neighbors and forced by the local authorities to guard lumber and tend fields. Chen's father, with his prerevolutionary college education, eventually managed to extract himself from the labor camps by becoming skilled in acupuncture (he used the biggest needles on the hated "cadres"). At the climax of this survival story, Chen, the book's first-person narrator, and his older brother, Jin, both compete in China's first nationwide, open educational tests in 1977: "We were out to make a point. The Chen family had been dragged through the mud for the last forty years.... Now it was time." Scoring among the top 2% of the country, the 14-year-old Chen achieved his dream of attending Beijing Language Institute. According to the epilogue, after graduating with high honors, he wound up in New York at age 23, where he won a scholarship to attend Columbia Law School, and later landed a job on Wall Street and married a doctor. Despite the devastating circumstances of his childhood and adolescence, Chen recounts his coming of age with arresting simplicity. Readers will cry along with this sad, funny boy who proves tough enough to make it, every step of the painful way. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
The grandchild of a former landlord—China's most spat-upon class after the Revolution—Chen was regularly beaten to a pulp by other children and, despite performing at the top of his class, repeatedly denied the right to continue at school. His family of nine—including his brother, three sisters, grandparents and parents—subsisted on moldy yams alone for entire winters. Meanwhile, his grandfather was attacked randomly by neighbors and forced by the local authorities to guard lumber and tend fields. Chen's father, with his prerevolutionary college education, eventually managed to extract himself from the labor camps by becoming skilled in acupuncture (he used the biggest needles on the hated "cadres"). At the climax of this survival story, Chen, the book's first-person narrator, and his older brother, Jin, both compete in China's first nationwide, open educational tests in 1977: "We were out to make a point. The Chen family had been dragged through the mud for the last forty years.... Now it was time." Scoring among the top 2% of the country, the 14-year-old Chen achieved his dream of attending Beijing Language Institute. According to the epilogue, after graduating with high honors, he wound up in New York at age 23, where he won a scholarship to attend Columbia Law School, and later landed a job on Wall Street and married a doctor. Despite the devastating circumstances of his childhood and adolescence, Chen recounts his coming of age with arresting simplicity. Readers will cry along with this sad, funny boy who proves tough enough to make it, every step of the painful way. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.KLIATT
Born in 1962, Da Chen grew up in rural China. His parents and grandparents were landlords; they were considered the lowest of the low and all family members were treated terribly. Da Chen was the youngest of five children. Despite his apparent intellectual abilities, Da was mercilessly tormented and actively discouraged from most academic activities. His best friends consisted of some of the local hoodlums who spent their time gambling, smoking and having a good time. Da felt that he had no future: he was doomed to a life as a farmer, as were his brothers and sisters. Then Mao died and slowly things changed. Opportunities opened up and there was talk of college even for those in rural areas. Da realized that his only means of escape was to go to college, so he committed himself to study. Trying to make up for missing years, he studied from sunrise to 11 at night. His older brother also decided to try to pass the college exams and studied with him. We follow Da's early life. What impresses the reader is his ability to look at his life and realize he must change. His single-minded determination is a testament to his strong family support. Both Da and his brother passed the exams and were accepted at colleges, obviously the beginning of a new life for both of them. In telling his own story, Da presents a fascinating look at growing up in a changing China. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1999, Random House/Anchor, 310p, 21cm, 00-698913, $13.00. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Robin S. Holab-Abelman; White Plains, NY, May 2001 (Vol. 35 No. 3)VOYA
Da Chen grew up during the Cultural Revolution in China as the child of intellectuals. He and his siblings were taunted by teachers and students alike, then kicked out of school by government officials. Da persevered, however, as he learned to play the violin, studied English with an elderly Christian, roamed town with a gang of delinquents, and replaced his sister as a factory worker. Eventually he was accepted back into school before taking his English skills to Beijing University. His family also persevered. His father learned acupuncture to supplement his meager state wages, and one of Da's brothers made it into university as well, years after being forced out of high school. This volume is an excellent coming-of-age story. Da learns about love, ambition, respect, and true friendship from his family, friends, and mentors. That he overcame such odds to enter one of China's most prestigious universities is a testament to his own and his family's will. In a time when Cultural Revolution memoirs are full of the nastiness of the favored, it is wonderful to read about the teacher who took Da under his wing and about his elderly eccentric tutor. The translation of Chinese slang into American slang, however, causes the story to lack flavor at times. The American speech pattern is often jarring and takes away from the Chinese setting. This is an unfortunate blot on an otherwise marvelous work that is recommended for older teens. VOYA CODES: 4Q 3P S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Will appeal with pushing; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 1999, Random, Ages 16 to 18, 311p, $25. Reviewer: Kendall Diane BrothersLibrary Journal
Over the past few years, Chinese memoirs dealing with adolescence in Communist China, written mostly by women who subsequently moved to the United States, have proliferated. These include Anchee Min's Red Azalea, Jaia Sun-Childers's The White-Haired Girl: Bittersweet Adventures of a Little Red Soldier, and Rae Yang's Spider Eaters. This work, written by a young man who came of age after the Cultural Revolution, is similar in some respects: Chen's bourgeois family was persecuted by the state, and he eventually left China to live in the United States. But Chen's story is different from the others because he grew up in rural, not urban, China. It carries an easily recognizable theme (boy falls in with hoodlums, then pulls himself up to succeed against all odds), which is at once uplifting and unsatisfying. Chen, who attended Columbia University Law School on a full scholarship and has worked on Wall Street, has written a clear and fast-moving book, but readers looking for either a modest narrator or a way to make sense of recent events in China will be disappointed. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.—Peggy Spitzer Christoff, Oak Park, IL
Chang
Colors of the Mountain is a completely engrossing coming-of-age that's surprisingly free of cynicism or bitterness. His stories are made all the more poignant by the wonder and vulnerability in the voice of their child narrator.—Newsweek