Author(s): Da Chen

Biography

A modern memoir of growing up in rural China, this book offers the moving story of one man's escape from hunger, poverty and ignorance, and of his supreme determination and extraordinary faith against the most impossible odds.

Da Chen was born in 1962 in a town over 50 hours' train journey from Beijing. Persecuted because of his family's landlord status, Da was an easy target for the farmer-teachers and bullying peasant boys. Whilst his older brother and sisters were forced to work in the fields, Da tired of the chaotic schooling of the Cultural Revolution and found solace with a band of good-time thugs. Following the death of Mao, an academic meritocracy was reintroduced. Da determined to escape Ch'ing Mountain, where he ran around barefoot and there was no electricity and no future.

Together with his brother Jin, who had been working the land since boyhood, he began to study day and night. In 1978, at the age of 16, Da Chen took a bus and a train for the first time in his life and travelled to Beijing, to the best English language institute in China.