McHugh, Maureen F. - China Mountain Zhang
Mon, Jan. 12th, 2004 01:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterMany thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
melymbrosia for the rec. Very, very good book.
I was a bit put off by the beginning, trying to figure out the world and also not quite liking Zhang, the main character. The book's actually more a series of short stories, all interwoven by the presence of Zhang, with every other story using his POV, and the others of random people. I really fell in love with the book on the chapter on his experience in Baffin, a lab in the Arctic Circle, and in his waiting for the sun to rise after an endless winter night.
Some bad things happen that hurt -- I particularly felt bad for Sanxiang. But some very good things happen as well -- not miraculous good things, but good, salt of the earth things, that show that life can be good, that life goes on. I really liked the chapters on Alexi and Martine on the Martian colony and the simplicity of their lives. Which is to say, their lives aren't simple at all beneath the surface. I really like books that talk about ordinary people and their extraordinariness... not necessarily heroism of any sort, but just a sort of acknowledgement on how miraculous and difficult and amazing it is that we all do this life thing.
I also really loved the chapter on Daoist engineering, and going through the experience of learning the system with Zhang. It's very hard to describe, so I'm not going to try.
There are probably also grander, smarter things to be said about the future society, in which China is the center of the world (as finally befits the name) and America has undergone a second revolution and turned socialist, but I'm not sure how to start on that. Suffice to say, I liked having Zhang as a main POV character -- he's someone at odds with both worlds because he looks Chinese and invokes envy that way, but he isn't really Chinese. I thought it was also interesting how I could kind of read China as America in the book and Chinese as white. I wonder if the author was going for a way for white Americans to feel foreign, with all the Chinese references and the like, in a way that non-Americans feel when first coming to this country, or just experiencing this country from abroad. The overwhelming force of China in the book is unmistakable -- not through force, but through sheer personality and influence. It's just there, impossible to ignore.
That said, it was kind of weird reading it with the author explaining cultural differences (the Chinese always do so and so, this is the Chinese way of doing blah). I mean, it was cool to have it there, but I guess it could be taken as essentialist as well. But then, how does one go about explaining these things without resorting to that? I had this same problem with Sherryl Jordan's The Hunting of the Last Dragon, which had a Chinese heroine. I can't find Asian fantasies for ages, and now three in a week or so! Of course, two are via recs ;).
Minor nitpicks -- si/four as second tone? Huh?! Also, Zhong Shan (Zhang's given name) is not the Mandarin pronunciation of the Yat-Sen in Sun Yat-Sen... Yat-Sen I think is the Cantonese pronunciation of one of Sun Yat-Sen's names, Zhong Shan being another. Yat-Sen in Mandarin should be Yi Hsien (I'm pretty sure, but I could also be embarrasingly wrong). Other wonky little weirdnesses in language... I think at times the author didn't differentiate between tones, which makes for some things that make no sense. Although all in all, pretty good, and I was rather fond of having the transliteration and the translation and the literal translation of the Chinese phrases (ex. hsiao hsin/be careful/"small heart" literally).
Anyhow, a really lovely book with an almost dreamlike quality to the narration (to me, probably because of the constant first-person present tense, which seems to be pretty popular now in fanfic at least). Hard to describe, like MacAvoy's Tea with the Black Dragon, but about being different, about being other, about connections and love and ephemerality and interconnections.
Links:
-minnow1212's review
-tenemet's review
-![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
rilina's review
-gwyneira's review
melymbrosia for the rec. Very, very good book.I was a bit put off by the beginning, trying to figure out the world and also not quite liking Zhang, the main character. The book's actually more a series of short stories, all interwoven by the presence of Zhang, with every other story using his POV, and the others of random people. I really fell in love with the book on the chapter on his experience in Baffin, a lab in the Arctic Circle, and in his waiting for the sun to rise after an endless winter night.
Some bad things happen that hurt -- I particularly felt bad for Sanxiang. But some very good things happen as well -- not miraculous good things, but good, salt of the earth things, that show that life can be good, that life goes on. I really liked the chapters on Alexi and Martine on the Martian colony and the simplicity of their lives. Which is to say, their lives aren't simple at all beneath the surface. I really like books that talk about ordinary people and their extraordinariness... not necessarily heroism of any sort, but just a sort of acknowledgement on how miraculous and difficult and amazing it is that we all do this life thing.
I also really loved the chapter on Daoist engineering, and going through the experience of learning the system with Zhang. It's very hard to describe, so I'm not going to try.
There are probably also grander, smarter things to be said about the future society, in which China is the center of the world (as finally befits the name) and America has undergone a second revolution and turned socialist, but I'm not sure how to start on that. Suffice to say, I liked having Zhang as a main POV character -- he's someone at odds with both worlds because he looks Chinese and invokes envy that way, but he isn't really Chinese. I thought it was also interesting how I could kind of read China as America in the book and Chinese as white. I wonder if the author was going for a way for white Americans to feel foreign, with all the Chinese references and the like, in a way that non-Americans feel when first coming to this country, or just experiencing this country from abroad. The overwhelming force of China in the book is unmistakable -- not through force, but through sheer personality and influence. It's just there, impossible to ignore.
That said, it was kind of weird reading it with the author explaining cultural differences (the Chinese always do so and so, this is the Chinese way of doing blah). I mean, it was cool to have it there, but I guess it could be taken as essentialist as well. But then, how does one go about explaining these things without resorting to that? I had this same problem with Sherryl Jordan's The Hunting of the Last Dragon, which had a Chinese heroine. I can't find Asian fantasies for ages, and now three in a week or so! Of course, two are via recs ;).
Minor nitpicks -- si/four as second tone? Huh?! Also, Zhong Shan (Zhang's given name) is not the Mandarin pronunciation of the Yat-Sen in Sun Yat-Sen... Yat-Sen I think is the Cantonese pronunciation of one of Sun Yat-Sen's names, Zhong Shan being another. Yat-Sen in Mandarin should be Yi Hsien (I'm pretty sure, but I could also be embarrasingly wrong). Other wonky little weirdnesses in language... I think at times the author didn't differentiate between tones, which makes for some things that make no sense. Although all in all, pretty good, and I was rather fond of having the transliteration and the translation and the literal translation of the Chinese phrases (ex. hsiao hsin/be careful/"small heart" literally).
Anyhow, a really lovely book with an almost dreamlike quality to the narration (to me, probably because of the constant first-person present tense, which seems to be pretty popular now in fanfic at least). Hard to describe, like MacAvoy's Tea with the Black Dragon, but about being different, about being other, about connections and love and ephemerality and interconnections.
Links:
-
minnow1212's review-
tenemet's review-
rilina's review-
gwyneira's review
Re: sun yat-sen
Sat, Jan. 24th, 2004 04:38 pm (UTC)