China Mountain Zhang [Mass Market Paperback]

Maureen F. McHugh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 1993

Rafael Zhang, an ordinary man with dangerous secrets in his past must forever flee from authority in a strange new world ruled by Marxist China, in a work that takes readers from decaying New York to Beijing to Mars. Reprint. NYT.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This 1993 winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award focuses on Zhang Zhong Shan, a young engineer in a U.S. dominated by a hugely successful Marxist China. The fact that he's gay in an era where homosexuality is punishable by death, and that he's only half Asian--his mother was Hispanic, but his parents had his genes altered to suppress his ancestry--add to his frustration and feelings of oppression. When he loses his place in the social labor system, Zhang moves to Shanghai and finds work within a Marxist system whose injustices he recognizes and whose delusions he resists. Using the resources available, Zhang struggles to shape a place for himself, and manages to affect the lives of others in the process.

Review

"A first novel this good gives every reader a chance to share in the pleasure of discovery; to my mind, Ms. McHugh's achievement recalls the best work of Delany and Robinson without being in the least derivative."--The New York Times

"It's a rare writer who produces a novel this good....I can't think of a book that offers a more lived-in future. The people are impulsive, changeable, and very real. Lovers of fine fiction, SF, and otherwise, will treasure this deeply humane book. Five stars."--Minneapolis Star-Tribune

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books (January 15, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812508920
• ISBN-13: 978-0812508925
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,460,838 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Maureen F. McHugh has spent most of her life in Ohio, but has lived in New York City and, for a year, in Shijiazhuang, China. She is the author of four novels. Her first novel, China Mountain Zhang, won the Tiptree Award and her latest novel, Nekropolis, was a Book Sense 76 pick and a New York Times Editor's Choice. McHugh is working on two novels, BabyGoth and Coming of Age in America. BabyGoth is a mother-daughter story: the Ya-Ya Sisterhood meets Alcoholics Anonymous. Coming of Age in America is a near future coming of age story -- and a romance. Chloe is a trailer park girl at a nice college. Derek is a rejuvenated 72-year-old returning student. McHugh teaches writing at the John Carroll University in Cleveland and at the Imagination and Clarion workshops. She and her husband and two dogs used to live next to a dairy farm. Sometimes, in the summer, black and white Holsteins looked over the fence at them. Now she lives in Austin, Texas.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you're looking for the plot, you've missed the point., September 18, 1998

By 

Michael Bulger (Rochester, NY, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: China Mountain Zhang (Paperback)

A number of the reviewers of this book on this site have commented on this novel's lack of plot. This is unfair. It has plot to spare, just not the sort of simple, follow-the-numbers plotline most of today's TV-raised readers seem to need. As a novel, it reads more as a slice of life (or lives) than a self-contained story, and from the perspective of a science fiction reader, this can serve (and does so here) to make the singular impact of this book one of total immersion in a well-thought-out, self-consistent future world. As an example of science fiction as extrapolation from the present, I can think of few works as good as this. As for this novel being an example of "gay and lesbian" fiction, one of the main characters happens to be gay. It is certainly a defining characteristic, especially in the future presented here, where homosexuality is again driven underground. I think we can gain some perspective on comments like this, however, from the fact that although most of the major characters are Chinese, no one has thought to characterize this novel as "Chinese fiction." All in all, China Mountain Zhang is a fine novel, with a narrative voice startlingly well-developed for a first-time novelist. I give this my highest recommendation--not the stuff of science-fiction adventure, but rewarding for those who care about finely crafted fiction.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I've read it twice, so far, September 8, 2005

By 

J. Ryckborst "-=- Jerome" (North of the 49th parallel) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: China Mountain Zhang (Paperback)

"China Mountain Zhang" is not another scifi adventure book (which definitely have a place when I want mindless entertainment). It's speculative fiction at its best. The author asks "What if the world were like this...?" and answers the question in such an interesting and believable way.
Other readers posting reviews have objected to the plot, to the society and politics, to the various relationships. I found this book like a series of biographies. What this book lacks is not plot but length. (I want more.) I found the politics, a blended world of socialism, capitalism, and racism, to be very interesting. I found the relationships interesting. A couple deals with homosexuality in their relationship. A single woman deals with disfigurement, internalised self-hatred, and date rape. A couple on Mars have to get past economic issues to further their relationship. Through it all, the author speculates some imaginative technology.
I loved this book when I first read it, and loved it when I re-read it ten years later. Whereas I usually donate my used science fiction to the local library, this is a book that I have hung onto. I hope to reread it in another ten years, or so.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life is hard, even in the furture., January 21, 1999

By 

flying-monkey (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: China Mountain Zhang (Paperback)

China Mountain Zhang is about ordinary people in an extraordinary world. It's all too easy in fiction to concentrate on the unnusual, on the heroes, on the 'big' picture. What is harder is to get inside the lives of those at the bottom, the ordinary people for whom life is not adventurous, but dull, slow and difficult. Zhang is human, not superhuman; his dilemma is not how to change the world or how to save civilization as we know it, but how to find a place for himself. There is plot, and there is resolution (contrary to what some seem to think), but the plot is subtle, and the resolution emotional, not only for Zhang, but also for the reader. This is a book that works as much by getting us to understand Zhang as by inspiring questions and emotions in ourselves. It's political, but the politics are personal, micro-level, those things that impact on everyone. As an evocation of the mundane sadness and suffering, hope and resolution in daily life, this book is not only unequalled in sci-fi, but is also up there with the best writing in any genre.