My wife gave me Colours of the Mountain two days ago. We were in China for two weeks in the latter half of September (instant experts – NOT)! When I was a primary school child (in Australia) in the 1950s a Chinese family who helped my mother after becoming a widow at 21 (me and little brother already in existence) had a grand-mother born in the 1880s who had bound feet – on which she hobbled in tiny satin-slippered feet to her pew in the church we attended. She and her husband arrived in Australia in 1900 – just before the iniquitous and racist “White Australia” policy came into effect (effectively lasting from 1901 till the early 1950s – when Japanese wives of Australian Occupation Forces in post-war Japan were permitted to bring them to Australia – by the way). Your book is written with vigour and the kind of naivety and immediacy that brings to mind comparable memories of my own childhood – the sense of injustice (the It’s not fair!) sensitivity – and the recognition, too, of being in the wrong, as well. Roald DAHL’s ability to capture that sense of looking up at the world from the height of the smaller self is what springs to mind as I read your story. The more light that is shed on our shared humanity – as you have done – the better. I do not believe that ways of thinking are so different at all (East vs West) – in fact after 16 years in Japan and several years shared among other parts of the world the only remarkable (in its truest sense) things are the external packaging – of ethno/cultural ways. But in the heart the desire for equity and justice and true freedom (that which doesn’t harm or put down others) is universal. Your book confirms that yet again for me! Bravo, Da! I will seek out your other books to add to those of Han Suyin, Pearl S. BUCK, Timothy MO, Brian CASTRO, Maxine Hong Kingston and many others who have informed me about China and beyond. By the way I once taught (TESOL) in Sydney in the early-mid 1980s with the daughter of the Judge who led the prosecution of the Gang of Four – and I met him on a visit to Australia – about 1984 I think!

All good wishes, Jim KABLE (b. 1949)

Thank you,
Harry

Thank you for writing The Wondering Warrior and Chinas Son. Your writings have allowed me to see the other side of the world and how it is like to live there. In the wondering warrior you allowed me to see a man who once had to beg for food and be at the bottom. Rise and become someone he was always meant to be. However in Chinas son I developed a strong bond with you as the main character.

I shared much with Da (you) even though my family was never a land lord partly because I lived in Russia but my family too lived in poverty. I too once lived in a different country before I came to USA. Upon arriving here I developed many skills unlike you they were not in music but in sports. I soon became a top athlete in my grade. After achieving this I started to hang out with the people I once hated most. They were the skaters of the grade; they smoked, drank, and did many other things. Even though they were all of what I hated most I became very good friends with them.

Other than regular bond with the book I gained a lot of knowledge of what it is like to live during Communist Mao. For those who were once rich got their life turned upside down by him. Everything of what you once owned was taken away. They started to live in poverty and despair. Though all that happened to you you never broke or backed down from your goals. You kept fighting and I highly admire that about you.

I greatly appreciate you writing you are a very inspiring person/writer. I know that you are a very busy person but if you could find a few moments of time to write back to me that would be great. Once again thank you for writing Chinas Son.

Andrey Lanahan