Colors of the Mountain Book

[Da's family was in the landlord class, and they were heavily abused. My own parents grew up in China during the same time, and I've heard about how different things were for them at the time, but I had no grasp of the kind of injustice Da's family went through. The book opens with Da's early years, and like Da as a young child, we slowly learn of the abuse that he and his family must bear. His grandfather is publicly beaten, his father is sent to labor camps, and he and his siblings are often pelted with fruits, vegetable and rocks by their neighbors. Everything about social standing, the law and schooling is slated against them, merely for coming from a landed ancestry. Da's siblings are banned from school and forced to work as farmers, given the toughest jobs, where they have no hope for a different future.

Allowed to stay in school, Da is "lucky." Living in the countryside, the only occupation for most is farming. Mao promised a great future build on agricultural productivity and modernization. Instead, they farmed the same way, only, as Da's dad says, they got paid less. (My history teacher told a story about some Communist village where hardly any farms were productive. Mao himself was coming to tour the area, and in a panic, they salvaged the few healthy plants from each plot and replanted them together in one field. Mao, seeing this single beautiful plot, believed that his Communist model was perfection, and ordered that all farms be operated the same way.) So Da's only hope for a future is to leave Yellow Stone.

Da is a stellar student, but he is bullied by classmates, teachers and the school board for being from a Black family. School is torture for him, and he finds his own way out. He makes friends with a formidable gang, and he enjoys life. He's humorous, and his memoir is fun to read, despite his difficult circumstances. The book description calls him a Holden Caulfield, and indeed he is a rebel. He's just cool, with his hoodlum friends and one-upping all his mean classmates.

But Da's life isn't really about having fun, and in the end he still needs a way to reach his dreams of escaping the dregs of adversity. He has a ridiculous work ethic, and reading the book, I so badly wished him success. It's not hard to predict the ending, as he is retrospectively writing the memoir, but there is more than just success to his story. He is supported by his friends and family, and his success means as much to them as it does to him. Dia, his chain-smoking and half-insane friend says to him "You gotta make me proud... You could do it man, and you gotta do it for me and f-ing school. Then when you pack up and take the fabulous Fujian-Beijing train, I'll load a shotgun and shoot the f-ing Head right on his shining skull, that son of a whore". Da's success is for himself, his family, and everyone who drew the short end of the stick. It's a dream come true.
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