China Mountain Zhang

China Mountain Zhang is the debut science fiction novel by Maureen McHugh. The novel was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel and Nebula Award for Best Novel and won a Lambda Literary Award, the Locus Award for Best First Novel, and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. 

The book features several stories from a small group of characters, some ABC (American Born Chinese) and others Americans. The story focuses on the story of a gay Chinese and Puerto Rican man named Rafael Zhang in his non-Chinese context, and when with Chinese people he goes by "Zhongshan, which is written with the characters with primary meanings "center" and "mountain"; the Mandarin name for China also begins with the character meaning "center" or "middle". Thus, "China Mountain" is an alternate reading of his Chinese given name. (Zhongshan is also one of the given names used by Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen.)" (wiki)  

The story is about how Zhang and how these other characters he meets along his path live in a near distant future, where socialism has completely replaced capitalism, in the Cleansing Winds Campaign, going from arrogant outsiders to finding their place in society. A maturation, a coming of age for all involved.


Zhang is almost thirty and he's just got a two year degree as a construction tech in New York. His Chinese boss wants him to marry his daughter, and he would support him so he could go to school in China and get a good job. In this future, China has the best jobs and the richest people. Zhang meets the Foreman's daughter, only to find out that she's very ugly and needs surgery on her face, some kind of bone problem. 

Zhang goes out with the Foreman's daughter but he doesn't get romantically involved, after all he's gay. Shenanigans ensue with the daughter, the Foreman thinks he's been sleeping with her at his place, after she was missing for days after an argument with her parents. 

Some time passes. Zhang decides he's going to study systems engineering in China so he can get a good job and go somewhere in life. He ends up doing a work program in the polar region, where he almost loses his mind among scientists there to study marine biology. The trade off is that if he works there for a couple years, the government will send him to China where he can get a systems engineer degree, and from there either stay in China and work at a big company, or go back to New York, where he could live with friends and family around. 

On another side story we have a sport called kite racing, where humans have been enhanced and ride these body kites, in races. The racers are legends and the spectators watch them race through the skies on a live video feed, which they can 'jack' into. 

This sub-story involves a kite racing woman who is sort of involved with another racer, who's older brother was a racing legend, who died recently. Although most of this section is sort of filler, and ultimately non sequential to Zhang's main plot, there is an amazing description of the kite racing that had me sitting at the edge of my seat. The way the fliers runs through the air with their bodies, with the impending doom of possible death is quite exhilarating. This was the action section. 

On a third side story we have the Foreman's daughter. She just got face surgery and now she's very pretty. She still works at the same company job, and one night a handsome guy talks to her at some bar. He eventually calls her at work and asks her out. He proceeds to take her to the bar, to a party, then swimming. Then he asks her to his place, at first she wants to go home but the guy makes a stink about how much he spent on her and that all he wants is for her to have a cup of coffee. In the end the Foreman's daughter ends up getting raped. This part of the novel was dark, but it could happen to any woman. She ends up not telling anybody about it, and that's that. She never sees the guy again. It puts a very realistic spin on rape, because it sounds like such a real and believable story. Scary.

At the end of the novel we find Zhang has his degree from studying in China, and is teaching systems engineering at a city college in Brooklyn. However, in China Zhang had a boyfriend named Haitao (being gay can get you killed in this future), who ends up killing himself after a late night party goes awry. Another thing to note is that while studying in China, Zhang tutors a student who's living on Mars, and Alexi, the student, challenges Zhang to think about systems in a completely different way, increasing his skills for his work.

Zhang goes to China to check on a possible job but in the end he gets down on China, even though at the beginning of the novel its his dream to be a big shot in China, making the big bucks. In the end he realized that he liked teaching in New York, that he liked being around all his friends and neighbors, and that he's going to stay put. 

Zhang meets the Foreman's daughter at the end of the novel and they have an awkward interaction. When the Foreman's daughter is about to drive off on the train, Zhang says in her ear that it wasn't her, implying that he didn't want to have sex with her because she was ugly, rather that its because he's gay. We don't get to see a reaction from the Foreman's daughter, as the train door closes and rushes away. 

The novel is quite damn good, very good for a debut novel. The writing brings to mind Samuel Delaney, who can write science fiction but is very literary about it. Also, although this novel is considered science fiction, it doesn't use any typical science fiction tropes, nor does any of the characters impact the world around them in a profound way. In a sense, this is a near distant future about people being people. What makes the book so great is that its all very ordinary, the world and the characters. It also must be noted that McHugh wrote this after living in China for a while, and the novels makes use of tons of Chinese words and culture. Some of the cultural stuff I recognized from things my step-father has told me about China.

This was a great Christmas gift from my dad. The book came out in 1992 and it holds up well to this day. Not all first novels are as good as this one for a writer. Good read even if you aren't into science fiction. First book of the new year already finished. Woo!