Socialism Is Great!: A Worker’s Memoir of the New China

Zhang's autobiography is a delight - she is so full of her great zest for life, and devoid of any self-pity. Pulled out of the high school she loved to take a safe factory job, she educates herself as best she can, and achieves some success as a translator and writer.

We share the details of her life in pre-Tiananmen, post cultural revolution China. It's touching, appalling, charming and shocking by turns, but all treated with a simple matter-of-factness. The do-nothing job, the period police, the rationing, the importance of connections and politics to everyday life... While she suffers many setbacks, nothing breaks her determination and joie de vivre. I really want to hear more of her. What happened next?

I heard Lijia Zhang being interviewed on my local NPR station. Her memoir is about growing up in China in the 1980s after the death of Mao and as China was just beginning to open up to the outside. Her family's poverty forced her to leave school early and go to work in a factory, inheriting a position there from her mother who then found another job. But Lijia was ambitious and had dreams of another life outside the factory. I think it's her spunk and honesty that makes her story so compelling. She chronicles her ups and downs, particularly all her relationships (most of them naive, all of them on the sly) and her persistence about learning English. A terrific read that confirms we are all fundamentally more alike than we are different. show more Oh, she loved Jane Eyre. show less

Lijia is a tomboyish child but also a good student, when at the age of fifteen she has to take up her mother's job in a rocket factory. We follow her life through the next ten years or so, as she studies, makes friends, starts to encounter young men, and continues to strive for a more interesting life.

Zhang is a fun and engaging personality, but the thing that makes this book interesting is that it's a real 'ant's eye view' of a time when China was starting to unfreeze and kicking off the process of tremendous change. We see the first private entrepreneurs tentatively setting up businesses, from kebab stalls to hair salons, and the impact that this has on daily life. A trickle of foreign films and novels becomes available. More and more show more Chinese start to study English and become familiar with ideas from outside China.

This is not high politics or literature, but it's a quick read and an interesting perspective. show less

Amazing Language, Disappointing Story

This is the author's memoir from her young adult years in the 1980s. Most of the book takes place after Zhang's mother forced her to leave high school and take over her old job at an arms factory. Zhang is surrounded by a job that lacks luster, coworkers more interested in napping than working, and an arguing family. Through it all, Zhang finds constant comfort in studying and reading.

Having just finished several memoirs that were set during periods of political upheaval, I was expecting a little more conflict in this book. Compared to those memoirs, Zhang's life is peaches and cream. She goes through boyfriends and interests much like any young person does. She makes several discoveries about show more herself, such as developing a love of poetry.

This is the book. There are relatively few hardships and relatively little conflict. I usually take notes when I read but found this narrative so dry that I stopped.

Nevertheless, Zhang's use of the language shines. She makes constant analogies and uses wonderful proverbs to illustrate how and why people act. These analogies show just how artistic and ornamental English can be. Zhang's ability to use the language rivals the best modern authors from any country. show less

I found this book to be kind of funny, although I'm not sure that it was always meant to be. Lijia Zhang tells the story of her transition into adulthood, a battle between frustration at the Chinese system - (being forced into factory life instead of University, failing to get promotions because she lacks the right guanxi (connections) etc.) and her utter determination and optimism. (The optimism is carried sometimes to a fault, especially in her love life.) I wished that the story of this Jane Eyre-reading rebel was carried a little further; her whole goal was to get out of the factory, and it appears that she did, as the back flap describes her as a journalist, but we don't get to enjoy that satisfaction with her.

Ik had geen idee vooraf over dit boek, ik ben er gewoon aan begonnen omdat ik in mij ereader maar eens begon met de letter Z. De kaft is echt heel slecht en past wat mij betreft absoluut niet bij het verhaal dat zich veel meer richt op de fabrieksarbeidster Lija.

Op het einde na, heb ik met plezier deze biografie gelezen. Het einde kwam voor mij op een heel raar punt. Ik weet niet of er nog een vervolg op komt, maar dat zou voor mij de enige reden zijn om een boek op dat punt te eindigen en dan zou ik het nog geen goede plek vinden.

De rest van het boek heb ik met veel plezier gelezen. Ik moest even wennen aan de schrijfstijl,die erg direct en zonder franje is. Het is meer een opsomming van feiten, waarbij je tussendoor wel de emotie show more voelt, maar de schrijfstijl past wel heel goed bij de sfeer van het socialistische China. Het verhaal had me in zijn grip en ik voelde mee met de persoon. Eigenlijk schommelt mijn waardering tussen de twee en drie sterren, maar uiteindelijk heb ik besloten om er twee sterren van te maken, gezien het totaal onbevredigende einde. show less

Memoir of one girl's hope to break from the mould of family obligations, chastity and the constrictions of 80s industrial China. She queries her nation's struggle to achieve modernisation while repressing individualism. The importance of education to escape the shackles of manual labour. Her search for true love casts doubt over the integrity of the men in her liaisons.