Colors of the Mountain

Colors of the Mountain is a 1999 memoir written by the Chinese author Da Chen. The book concerns Da Chen's upbringing during the brutal and repressive regime of Mao Zedong during the 1960s and 1970s.

Chen is born in 1962 in Yellow Town, which is located on the central coast of Fujian Province in China. By that time, China was in the midst of what is known as The Great Starvation which killed between 15 and 30 million people. While natural factors like drought were significant causes of the nationwide famine, the policies enacted by the repressive regime of Mao Zedong are said to have exacerbated the problem greatly. Things are even worse for Chen's family because it belongs to "the landlord class" in China, one of the most hated socioeconomic segments in the country. Not that there are many amenities to be had in Chen's community: no electricity, no cars, no buses, and no television. Chen will be 20 years old before he ever uses a vehicle other than a bicycle.

But because Chen's father and grandfather used to be landlords, they are forced to work in labor camps for no compensation. Often there is nothing for Chen's family to eat other than mold-infested yams. When Chen is a little older, he decides that the only hope for improving his lot in life is to be accepted into the public school. While public education isn't totally free, it's affordable for most families. But for Chen's family, it amounts to the cost of 100 moldy yams, which is too much for them to spend. And so Chen begs and begs to be admitted and, miraculously, the school lets him enroll for free.



Contrary to what Chen expected, there is little in the way of academic instruction or discipline in the public school. If Chen can't use his intellect to get ahead, he decides, he will use his social skills. And slowly but surely, Chen climbs the social ladder until he is arguably the most popular boy in school. But other students suspicious of his class designation as the son of a "landlord" go out of their way to torture and humiliate him until his social status suffers irreparable damage.

Undeterred, Chen befriends a group of outcasts like him. They fashion themselves self-styled rule-breakers, smoking cigarettes and gambling over big family-sized meals made from stolen foodstuffs. Other examples of ingenuity include the notorious nicotine addict who smokes his homegrown tobacco before every meal, after every meal, and in a break during the meal. It's only after this surprisingly sumptuous description that Chen tells the reader the man fertilizes his tobacco plants with his own urine.

Meanwhile, Chen's father seeks to improve his family's lot by teaching himself acupuncture. The gambit works and the family slowly begins to lift itself out of abject poverty. Chen's own escape from poverty comes after Mao Zedong dies and the country institutes nationwide college entrance exams. With this the only way for most young people to avoid a life of manual labor, the competition among students is intense, both in terms of preparation and in terms of physical conflict on the day of the exam. When Chen and his friends arrive to take the test, they are surrounded by ambulances and stretchers filled with students who got in fights.



In the end, Chen and a number of his family members escape the kind of poverty endemic in their tiny, remote mountain village. But so many others weren't so lucky, a fact Chen is clear-eyed about throughout the proceedings. Colors of the Mountain is thus an inspiring tale of overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds, but also a sobering look at the damage wrought in China during the Mao regime.