Customer Reviews

Sons of Heaven

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
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The Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989 left in its wake scores of casualties and haunting images that aired again and again on international television. SONS OF HEAVEN, Terrence Cheng's first novel, is remarkable in many ways, but mostly, centrally, for its thrilling ability to imagine the life of the now famous (but still unidentified) young man who dared to step in the path of an approaching government tank.

Cheng gracefully interweaves three distinct points of view in a way that ultimately humanizes China's complex modern history. We are privy to the point of view of that young, skinny boy (named Xiano-Di in the novel), of Xiano-Di's brother Lu (who is a soldier in the army) and also, most daringly, of Deng Xiaoping.

The passages from Deng's perspective are gripping. Deng is a riveting character: he is a revealed as a complicated man, full anger, sadness, and humanity. With Cheng's portrayal of Deng, he manages to articulate the passion, motivation, and desire for freedom and power that fuels all revolutionary acts.

We should never forget the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Now that we have this impressive and thrilling debut novel, the powerful images from 1989 will haunt us anew.

Terrence Cheng writes a bold new novel re-imagining the circumstances surrounding the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. He has boldly (and some would say presumptuously) fictionalized the accounts of the man who famously held up a column of People's Army tanks by merely standing in front of them, and that of Deng Xiaopeng. Both of these stories would be difficult to tell in the hands of a lesser writer, but Cheng pulls it off admirably.

The novel isn't so much about the Tiananmen uprising as it is about how the uprising affected the main characters. That said, perhaps the most important scene in the book (holding up the column of tanks) comes too soon in the narrative. After reading that dramatic sequence, everything else that follows falls flat. It's no coincidence that Cheng's narrative loses steam in the beginning of the second half of the book.

That said, "Sons of Heaven" is an important work and an impressive debut novel.

The Tienanmen crackdown in 1989 still makes my heart tremble. The book cover jacket showing a man confronting in front of the tank stirs me. Cheng's debut novel is a historical fiction interwoven with three parties: The dissident (Xiao-Di, meaning little brother), the soldier (Lu), and the comrade (the late Deng Xiaoping). The novel traced events leading to the Tienanmen masscre and the pursuit of fugitive and student protest leaders afterwards. The book brings alive struggles of common "laobaishung" (peasants) families and the their toil for democracy. Cheng also cunningly humanize the former Communist leader Deng Xiaoping.

Cheng has done a phenomenonal job in bridging these three characters together. Little brother Xiaodi, the once study-aboard elite, becomes infatuated with the democratic student movement and confronts in front of tanker. Xaiopi later on becomes fugitive accused of overturning the Communist Party. Lu, Xiaodi's older brother, serves on the 38th Troop of the People Liberation Army, raids through his grandparents' house and remote village in search of the suspect. Comrade Deng is portraited more as humanistic than many have thought. His interaction with Pufang, his immobile son, makes him somewhat more likable. A good read.

Cheng offers a highly unique perspective on the Tiananmen Square crackdown. I only give it 3 stars because his style is a bit spartan for my taste and I probably won't reread it, but as LeVar Burton says, "Don't take my word for it." Sons of Heaven is actually quite mesmerizing in some parts, such as when Lu returns to question his grandparents, and of course the prologue's grim progression through the dark Beijing streets.
That reviewer from Washington who only read the first 30 pages really should have read the whole book before reviewing it. On page 169 of the paperback there is mention of the contract Xiao-Di signed promising to return to China after his American education, plus he had an obligation to care for his grandparents as well. That reviewer also frets over how unusual Xiao-Di is in that he doesn't try to stick around in the US longer, as most others do; if he'd read past the first few chapters, he would have noticed that Xiao-Di is different from the other students. And Cheng spends about 8 pages on Xiao-di's American experience, not 1. I think that this amount of pages is proportional to the importance of schooling in his life and later ideology; it's not very close to the core of the story. The book is about China, not Cornell or interracial dating or immigration, so to me 8 pages was plenty after considering the book as a whole. Concentrating on the Chinese student experience in America misses the entire point of the novel's commentary on socialist thought and its social consequences.
On the whole, a better-than-average book.

This imaginative first novel takes us into the mind of the anonymous (and now famous) Chinese student who stood his ground against an oncoming tank in Tiananmen Square during the massacre of students in June, 1989. Creating a persona he calls Xiao-Di, author Cheng depicts him as a former Cornell student, unable to find work upon his return home to Beijing. The obvious contrasts illustrated by Xiao-Di's experiences in Ithaca vs. Beijing are given broader scope when Cheng also takes us into the minds of two more characters: Xiao-Di's brother Lu, a short-tempered, brawling member of the Red Army, who is eventually sent to find and arrest his brother; and Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader, whom we see conversing with the ghost of Mao while he determines to end the embarrassing student demonstrations by force, if necessary.

Cheng has chosen to depict his characters in ways that make them feel familiar. Lu is a hothead just like the hotheads we all know, though certainly more violent, while Xiao-Di is a frustrated, out-of-work graduate with little idea of where his future will take him, not unlike other recent graduates. Deng Xiao-ping is seen as a fond and caring father to his son, and his decision about the students is seen as a difficult one. By taking us into the minds of these characters, Cheng creates a sense of immediacy and urgency, and as the forces leading up to the demonstrations develop and then take on a life of their own, he successfully evokes a "You Are There" atmosphere.

Though some readers may find this approach to be praiseworthy, others may find it limiting. Cheng, who has lived most of his life in New York, develops the events and the characters' thoughts from a westerner's perspective, their observations feeling more western than what one would expect of a Chinese citizen. Xiao-Di himself refers, surprisingly, to his "quiet awe, like I was a part of something so great and yet I was so small. The closest thing was the first time I'd stepped onto Cornell's campus..." Cheng's three points of view give us access to some of the forces which may have come into play in Tiananmen Square, but the characters representing these viewpoints are, of necessity, stereotypical--each representing a group rather than a unique individual. Still, this is an intriguing, highly imaginative tour de force by a young writer who has chosen to write about people and events from a culture not his own. Mary Whipple

SONS OF HEAVEN by Terrence Cheng is a fictionalized account of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. The strength of the novel lies in Cheng's bold attempt to interweave the story of Xiao Di; the lone demonstrator standing in front of the tanks, his brother Lu, a soldier in the People's Army and most notably Deng Xiaoping. The risk pays off as it is the strongest segment and gives the novel weight. We see Deng as a father, a husband, a comrade. Cheng humanizes Xiaoping, who, justly or unjustly is considered a tyrant here in the West. How could he order the soldiers to open fire on the students? What led him to that decision? Cheng's painstaking research gives the reader insight to the enigmatic Communist ruler. That is not to say we agree with his actions, but Cheng offers up Deng's point of view in order to decipher the turn of events.
SONS OF HEAVEN eloquently tells the story of modern China, haunted by its past and helpless to see its future.

This isn't something I would normally pick up, but I heard the author speak and was curious. I loved this book. It is so well written. He writes in a smooth lyrical way and the characters burst from the pages. I found myself tearing through this to get to the end. Cheng takes a real historical event and personalizes it in such a realistic way. I almost believe he was actually there and knew the stories of everyone involved. I think we'll see great things from this author.

Who was that young man who stunned the world as he stood in front of the tanks sent to put an end to the Tiananmen Square student demonstrations in 1989? Not only has Terrence Cheng given him a fictitious name, Xiao-Di, he has also created a family, a life and a history for him. But what is truly remarkable about this book is that Cheng has portrayed Deng Xiaoping, the leader thought to have ordered the military intervention, as a man struggling with his own ideals. Westerners, eager to side with the oppressed, have rushed to condemn human rights violations attributed to China's rulers without much thought to the making of the men they hold responsible.

The giant that is China has stumbled its way through the twentieth century irritated relentlessly by insatiable beasts gnawing at its parts. Under siege since the beginning of the century when Dr. Sun Yat-sen formed the Nationalist Party to overthrow the corrupt Qing Dynasty that collapsed in 1911, China suffered several tumultuous decades with power divided among warlords, nationalists, communists, and even Japanese invaders at various times. The Long March of the Chinese communists in the mid-1930's is deeply embedded in the psychology of the men who ultimately took power in 1949. Deng Xiaoping was one of those men.

He recalls the dreams of his own youth when he joined a trek of 6,000 miles in pursuit of a better life for China's peasants. Of the 80,000 people who began the Long March, only 8,000 survived to reach the caves outside of Beijing. He remembrs when, in the early stages of Mao's Cultural Revolution, he was denounced as a "capitalist roader" and subjected to "re-education." He muses on the fate of his son, Deng Pufang, who remains in a wheel chair, the result of a "fall" from a third story window while being interrogated.

Xiao-Di, recently returned from an American university where he was introduced to the concepts of freedom, is a reluctant participant in the demonstrations, having joined at the urging of his childhood friend, Wong. When Wong is shot by soldiers, Xiao-Di cannot believe that the soldiers would turn on their own people and impulsively resists the onslaught of the tanks. Aware of the fate that awaits him if he's caught, he becomes a fugitive.

The third central character, Lu, Xiao-Di's older brother, is an angry young man, once a member of Mao's Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. He has found a home of sorts in the People's Liberation Army. To prove his loyalty and perhaps earn a promotion, Lu becomes instrumental in the hunt for his brother. He is a largely unsympathetic character until the end of the story, but Cheng does a fine job of helping us understand his dark side even though we don't like him.

In a society largely uneducated and with too many bureaucrats, where power can be a fleeting thing, the complexities of the situation in Tiananmen Square are thoughtfully presented in SONS OF HEAVEN. The ghosts of the past have found their voices and the story is compelling without superfluous additions. Sadly, no one wins in the end and the beast rumbles on.

In SONS OF HEAVEN, Terrence Cheng deftly weaves together fact, fiction, and conjecture. Most everyone in the Western World has by now seen the unknown young man in front of the tank, seen images so powerful that they brought worldwide attention back to the human condition in modern China. By taking such a well-known event with an indelible image, Cheng risked falling under the shadow of the very image he was attempting to explore. Instead, Cheng creates a fast-paced plot driven novel about two brothers on different sides of the same coin, and we now have a thoughtful, powerful novel that humanizes not only the figure in front of the tank, but the leaders that made it seem so necessary to him that he make that desperate stand. I look forward to more from this young writer.

I thought this was written nicely and was well worth reading. I just randomly picked up this book at the book store and I'm glad I did. Without giving anything away, I liked the ending, and I would recommend this book to anyone.