Customer Reviews

Colors of the Mountain

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I have no way of knowing whether this story is true or not. It certainly feels authentic to me. It is strange to me how the cultural revolution is remembered differently among several of the chinese I know. Everyone admits it was a tough time, but some are willing to let Mao off the hook in the name of order. Others see Mao as a killer. Hey, they aren't mutually exclusive views! Mao was a killer and he provided order for China. Which do you prefer, life or order?

Like a recession, it is serious when you are unemployed and mild when others are out of work. If you and your family survived without being damaged by the cultural revolution you may think it wasn't all that bad. However, Da Chen's family was almost destroyed by it. It seems that all sides would consider this huge historical event a bit more deeply than it appears they do.

It seems kind of silly that in a country as large as the US or the even larger China one would categorically say what one family could or could not experience based upon some generalized study of the culture. Life is full of oddities and exceptions. The facts are that under Communism there are totalitarian powers given to the party and those are excersized all the way down to individuals and often in petty, vicious and horrible ways.

And to say that because it was Da Chen's grandfather that was the landlord and therefore it wouldn't have affected the author is a very odd criticism given that families, even in the west, carry stigma from outcast ancestors for generations.

It would be great to see verification one way or the other, but in any case it is a powerful story of life as an outcast. It is an easy read that you won't want to put down until you finish it.

I'm sick of the reviewers that are China apologists that have attacked this wonderful book. If you're such defenders of that cruel government, why are you living in the United States? Da Chen's story of how he survived the cultural revolution and brought honor to his family is inspirational and TRUE! He lived it, not YOU! The ending is especially touching as to the relationship between a father and his son. Again, don't listen to the negative reviews and read this book. You won't regret it!

I bought this book on a whim, and then read it in one 8-hour stretch. Da is just a couple years older than me, and it was amazing to compare my middle class life in America in the 70's to his life in China at the same time. This comparison was invited because Da and I were very much alike as kids, even though he was half a world away. The best autobiographies remind you that individuals can have many different kinds of experience, but People are much the same everywhere.

I wouldn't worry too much about the negative reviews I've read here. They're just jealous. I bet that person is Han, still trying to stick it to Da after all these years.

"Facts" are more than irrelevant in a book like this. The only important thing is how Da saw his own life at the time. The book succeeds remarkably in this respect. And Da's command of colloquial English is shockingly good. It's quite a feat that he wrote this book in English. If I didn't know he was a born Chinese-speaker, I probably never would've guessed.

Bravo.

I was amazed at the negative reviews of this marvellous book, and can only put it down to what one could call "ownership". In other words those who have studied Chinese history, or who lived there during the time of the biography, feel that their paper studies, or their memories, are the only valid ones. I am quite ready to believe this biography and revelled in every minute. Most unlike other popular biographies of China (Wild Swans etc ..)and a pleasure because of that. A young boy's memories, which may be skewed by time, but valid none the less. Read it with a fresh mind, and allow yourself to wallow in the memories.

To be honest, I did not buy the book. I found it on a plane ride from New York to San Jose. It was left on the seat and I coldn't help but read it. I found it to be entirely interesting that the thought of leaving it on the seat again was out of the question. It's an excellent book that I myself found engrossed in it. Coming from a Chinese family, I totally understood what he went through .. with all the emphasis on education while mum prays insistantly. I absoutely loved it and I feel for the person who left the book in the plane. But I must thank the person for introducing to me a great writer.. and a fantastic piece of literature.

Something about this book caught my eye right away in the bookstore, but I differ from a number of the reviewers here in one significant way: I specifically avoided picking it up for some time because of the Chinese subject matter. I have always found Chinese authors or books about Chinese subjects to hold little interest for me.

Perhaps that lack of longing for a "true" Chinese experience is why I was not disappointed, as some other reviewers were. In fact, despite the fact that none of it could have taken place without the background of the cultural revolution, I found it to transcend cultural boundaries. It is really a wonderful memoir about a boyhood. Getting into trouble, sneaking cigarettes, learning about sex, making friends and enemies at school, searching for your calling in life... and oh yes, the Cultural Revolution.

I would be the last person to tell you whether the details of the memoir are historically accurate, as has concerned others so much. I can say that the history is fairly incidental to the real meat of the book. It's definitely a personal memoir, not political, and the history is seen from a child's perspective. Playground brawls are infinitely more important here than armies, and I related to it all almost as easily as if he and I had just grown up in different school districts, not different countries. Yes, I did feel like the "good guys" came out better and the "bad guys" came out worse than they probably really were. But hey, let those guys write their own books.

I wasn't looking for history, I wasn't looking for the exotic, I wasn't looking for insight into my soul. Maybe that's what made me a perfect audience for this book. I didn't walk away changed, I just had a really good time reading a good story. If that's why you read books, then give this one a try.

Da Chen is still being attacked by his enemies as they try to pick holes in this very fine memoir. They insist some things could not be true because his description of them doesn't match their own perceptions, prejudices, partial knowledge or whatever. For example: he must have been the grandson and not the son of a landlord...landlords could not own pigs so his family would not have had any...education was free so he would not have had to pay a fee to go to school...he could have joined the Little Red Guards if he'd really wanted to... and on and on ad nauseam. Who cares? If your experience or knowledge of that shameful part of China's history was different, write your own book but don't try to smear someone else's highly commendable effort.