BOOKS: China Mountain Zhang

China Mountain Zhang” has been on my reading list for sometime. A friend suggested it and I told him yes I know it exists and I know I should read it, but… Well I finally got to it about a month ago. It took me a while. It was published in 1997, but hey I read a lot of books. Everything gets stuck in a queue. I’ve always liked speculative fiction about the future and “China Mountain Zhang” fit the bill better than I had thought. If I knew it was this good I would have bumped it up in the old queue a few slots. The plot? It’s the future. The world is dominated by China. Mandarin is the new world language. The United States is now the "The Socialist States of America" and the main protagonist a Asian American man and various other characters must make their way and live their lives within a technologically advanced and oppressive society. If your looking for a neat story with a happy ending__not here. “China Mountain,” has a loosely devised plot. This book is more dependent on characterization than plot. But it works. One main character emerges but it’s still more like a series of biographies, each with its own chapter, with some overlap. The character lines all come together slightly at the end of the story. The relationships are what’s interesting and how the characters have to interact with this draconian society. Because the Chinese dominate the world all the best jobs go to the Chinese so the main character Zhang, who is half Chinese half Hispanic must hide is genetic inheritance as well as his sexuality if he is to make his way in life. First he loses his job as an engineer because he won’t go out with his boss’s ugly daughter. Then out of desperation he takes a job at the Arctic Circle which he is then able to parlay into admission into Nanjing University. From there he is further educated and then returns to New York. Does he finally achieve personal fulfillment? Well.. it’s a pretty nasty society. The strength of the author's portrayal is that the society she creates is quite believable and it makes reading about it fascinating. Unfortunately the writing is somewhat unfocused (plot wise) and that detracts, but even still it’s interesting to read about interesting characters making their way in a possible scenario of the future.