Colors of the Mountain [Hardcover]

Da Chen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 8, 2000

"I was born in southern China in 1962, in the tiny town of Yellow Stone. They called it the Year of Great Starvation."

In 1962, as millions of Chinese citizens were gripped by Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards enforced a brutal regime of communism, a boy was born to a poor family in southern China. This family—the Chens—had once been respected landlords in the village of Yellow Stone, but now they were among the least fortunate families in the country, despised for their "capitalist" past. Grandpa Chen couldn't leave the house for fear of being beaten to death; the children were spit upon in the street; and their father was regularly hauled off to labor camps, leaving the family of eight without a breadwinner. Da Chen, the youngest child, seemed destined for a life of poverty, shame, and hunger.

But winning humor and an indomitable spirit can be found in the most unexpected places. Colors of the Mountain is a story of triumph, a memoir of a boyhood full of spunk, mischief, and love. The young Da Chen is part Horatio Alger, part Holden Caul-field; he befriends a gang of young hoodlums as well as the elegant, elderly Chinese Baptist woman who teaches him English and opens the door to a new life. Chen's remarkable story is full of unforgettable scenes of rural Chinese life: feasting on oysters and fried peanuts on New Year's Day, studying alongside classmates who wear red armbands and quote Mao, and playing and working in the peaceful rice fields near his village.

Da Chen's story is both captivating and endearing, filled with the universal human quality that distinguishes the very best memoirs. It proves once again that the concerns of childhood transcend time and place.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Now a writer living in New York, Da Chen describes his youth in mainland China with engaging humor and affecting warmth. It's often a harrowing tale: born in 1962, Chen was the grandson of a landlord, which rendered his entire family pariahs during the Cultural Revolution. And though initially an excellent student, he was ostracized in school and told he could never attend college. He responded by making friends with a group of young thugs who drank, smoked, and gambled but were kind to him. After Mao died in 1976, the budding juvenile delinquent discovered that higher education might be available to him after all. Chen worked hard to make up for years of neglected studies, and his memoir closes with a jubilant scene as he and his brother Jin are both accepted into college; for his suffering family, "thirty years of humiliation had suddenly come to an end." Chen's lucid yet emotional prose unsparingly portrays a topsy-turvy society where unfairness reigns and the rules are arbitrarily changed without warning, but his zest for life and sharp eye for character make even the most awful moments grimly funny. This is no saga of victimization, but a thrilling account of an ordeal that fosters spiritual growth. Readers will cheer Chen's triumph over daunting odds. --Wendy Smith

From 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. Agent, Elaine Koster. 5-city author tour. (Feb.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (February 8, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375502882
• ISBN-13: 978-0375502880
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (76 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,283,593 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Colors of the Mountain shine bright, February 21, 2000

By 

Alan K. Anzai (Carmichael, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Colors of the Mountain (Hardcover)

Da Chen's tale is both entertaining and inspiring. His perseverance and hope despite the chaotic times of the Cultural Revolution are uplifting. His story illustrates the power of the human spirit, and also the profound impact that kind adults (his cousin, Wen Qui, and his English teacher, Professor Wei) can have on an impressionable youngster, as he stood at various crossroads in his life. If you enjoyed reading Gus Lee's coming-of-age story, "China Boy," you'll also appreciate this book. Hopefully, the author will write a sequel to further track his adventures, from country bumpkin to prestigious Beijing Language Institute, and later, Columbia University Law School.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Coming to understand, March 25, 2000

By 

Mark A. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Colors of the Mountain (Hardcover)

As with many recent memoirs, "Colors of the Mountain" is a warm-hearted, plain spoken, attempt at understanding a childhood -- one more difficult than most of us can possibly imagine. A born artist, Da Chen seems to have spent most of his life in America determining how to come to grips with this impossible youth. Most reader criticisms have to do with the book's flawed factual details -- but what writer is going to remember the names of office-holders and bureaucrats from when he was nine years old? The more important point is that Da Chen made something out of this remarkably trying childhood and became a remarkable man and writer. That is why the book was written. I look forward to the sequel.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Heartwarming, inspirational, memorable., February 5, 2002

By 

David J. Gannon (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Colors of the Mountain (Paperback)

Colors of the Mountain is the story of Da Chen's coming of age in post revolutionary, rural China. The son of a family of "landlords", a despised class in China at this time, the book is semi autobiographical and is an inspirational tale of prevailing against long odds. It is also a wonderful window into life in rural China--the nature of the countryside, the characters all small towns seem to produce in doves all over the planet, the struggles that everyone must endure off in the "boonies". (One suspects that these elements of the story probably aren't far from what life is currently, China being the place it is.)

On the whole I found the narrative to be compelling, the characters memorable and the story quite well structured. If there is a major flaw in the novel it's that the language is sometimes repetitive and awkward--one can intuit that English is obviously not Mr. Chen's native tongue. On the whole, however, this flaw in the end just adds to the charm and mood of the tale far more than it detracts from it.

I bought 5 or 6 copies of this to give out as Christmas gifts this past December and everyone who I gave it to has enjoyed it. You will too.