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    Sounds of the River: A Memoir
    Unavailable
    Sounds of the River: A Memoir
    Unavailable
    Sounds of the River: A Memoir
    Ebook427 pages8 hours

    Sounds of the River: A Memoir

    By Da Chen

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    "A story about suppression, humiliation, vindication, and, ultimately, triumph." —New York Times Book Review

    From the bestselling author of Colors of the Mountain—an engrossing, gloriously written coming-of-age saga that picks up where that book left off—in Beijing during China’s Cultural Revolution

    In this "equally beguiling sequel to his acclaimed memoir" (Kirkus Reviews), teenager Da Chen takes his first train ride away from the farm he was raised on to his new university life in Beijing. He soon faces a host of ghastly challenges, including poor living conditions, lack of food, and suicidal roommates. Undaunted by these hurdles, and armed with a dogged determination to learn English and "all things Western," he competes to win a chance to study in America—a chance that rests in the shrewd and corrupt hands of the almighty professors.

    Poetic, hilarious, and heartbreaking, Sounds of the River is a gloriously written coming-of-age saga that chronicles a remarkable journey—a travelogue of the heart.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 18, 2011
    ISBN9780062133601
    Unavailable
    Sounds of the River: A Memoir
    Author

    Da Chen

    Dr. Da Chen is currently an ARC (Australian Research Council) DECRA (Discovery Early Career Researcher Award) fellow at Department of Infrastructure Engineering, the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is also an Honorary Research Fellow at School of Civil Engineering, the University of Queensland, where he obtained his PhD degree in June 2018. He worked as a research fellow at MFM and ISMD, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. He will shortly join School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UNSW (University of New South Wales) Sydney, as a lecturer. Dr. Chen has an interdisciplinary research background across structural, material, and mechanical engineering with a focus on the advanced composite structural forms for various end-user applications, such as novel lightweight non-uniform foam components, graphene reinforced nanocomposites, vibration absorbers, concrete columns, and offshore fish cages. His study promotes the development of functionally graded porous structures and has been widely acknowledged. His research achievements include 6 Highly Cited Papers (top performing 1%), 2330 Web of Science citations, and 7.72 for Field-Weighted Citation Impact (2017-2021, SciVal), as of January 2023.

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    Reviews for Sounds of the River

    4/5

    32 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I have to say that if this isn't a polished autobiography, or one of a person of extraordinary interest, it does succeed as a story of an ordinary life that gives us some feeling for a time and place - and a human condition - that is relatively unfamiliar to us. Da Chen portrays himself as an eager but naive student of English in China at a time (the early 1980's?) when this was an unusual, and slightly dangerous, course of study. He is caught between his belief in his roots in traditional village life and the scorn and temptations of his sophisticated city bred fellow students, and between his strong sense of self and the demands of the State to conform to the expectations of the Communist Party. That he is eventually telling this story from an academic posting in the United States is no surprise. This is slow moving, and the naivety can be wearing - but that is only because it is genuinly conveyed. Life didn't move with great rapidity for Da Chen, and the road wasn't studded with great events or meetings with extraordinary people. But move it did, and in this sense this is a story of the whole of China in its slow liberalisations through the 1980's and 90's, up until the time of the Tienanmen massacre. And Da Chen's story, from village to Beijing, to the United States is a story of tremendous change, and of holding onto what makes each of us who we are. Recommended, but as an unremarkable but authentic story of that time. It is interesting to compare this with Jan Bredsdorff's 'Revolution, there and back', a story of a westerner teaching English in China during the same period.
    • 4/5
      Not quite as mesmerizing as the first, but nevertheless an engaging read, about a sidelined country boy who made it to the most famous university in the country, and how he overcame all odds there to fulfill his dream. An inspiration for people who may be thinking that circumstances are too much for them to handle, this book tells us "don't give up!"