Sounds of the River

By Da Chen
HarperCollins, $25.95
ISBN 0060199253

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Autobiography captures life in China

Talk about a "clash of civilizations." You don't know the meaning of the phrase until you read Da Chen's account of a group of NBA basketball players' first encounter with original Chinese food. "Bear paws simmered rotten . . . dripping with gluelike juices. North mountain pheasants . . . complete with . . . heads . . . Live carp, still twitching . . . "

Memoirists are not required to be amusing, but Chen's impish, and impartial, humor, emerging from human situations rather than quips or jokes, adds special appeal to Sounds of the River, the second volume of his life, which began (as he recounted in The New York Times bestseller Colors of the Mountain) in an isolated village in Southwestern China. The son of an intellectual family, he spent his childhood in the upside-down world of the Cultural Revolution, when being educated could be the kiss of death. Sounds of the River takes up the story as Chen, 18, arrives at Beijing Language Institute. Weathering his own in-house clash of cultures, he adapts to big-city attitudes and an exponential increase in an ancient Chinese tradition -- one that predates Communism: the enforced living of one's own life at the whim of others.

Readers looking for a broad portrayal of Chinese history in the years after the Cultural Revolution must look elsewhere. Chen's life reflects the tremendous changes only as they indirectly affect him. In spite of his use of American idioms ("Mom" and "Dad" and "Give me a break") the palpable "foreignness" of his meetings with Communist Party comrades, and the connections and bribery needed to sustain his dreams break through the distractions that mark the lives of teenagers everywhere.

Sounds of the River tantalizingly closes on the verge of the author's emigration to America, recounting his bittersweet farewell to family, friends and his old life. We know that Chen now lives with his wife and two children in New York State. The only trouble with his new book is that it practically guarantees you're going to lay out more money in the future to learn the details of how he got from there to here.

Maude McDaniel writes from Cumberland, Maryland.