Colors Of The Mountain Summary

The book Colors of the Mountain by Da Chen is about the his experience in China during and after the Cultural Revolution. Chen walks us through what it was like to be a child during the Cultural Revolution and how it felt to be under the rule of Chairman Mao. His accounts are each shocking and strike a chord with the audience. Not only does he talk about Mao’s reign, but he discusses life after his death, and his own pursuit of education. Three of the Cultural Universals I found in this book were Themes, Recreation, and Political Organization. The first theme I found was in chapter 8. During the Cultural Revolution, Ping-Pong became a very popular pastime for Chinese. This followed China’s multiple wins at the 1973 and 1975 World Table Tennis Championships. In the book, Chen gets
In this chapter, Chen describes the effects that the Cultural Revolution had on education. These effects were mainly put in place by Chairman Mao, under his idea that a leaf needed to be turned over in Chinese society. He wanted to forget the past and move on to the future. At this time, religion was banned, many historic relics were destroyed, and many educational institution were either restricted or shut down as a work mentality was promoted. “Fifth grade classes were made up of three categories: labor, politics, and self-study. We dug up the playground and turned it into vegetable plots so that young kids could labor under the scorching sun and have empty but healthy minds” (Chapter 11) This shows the effects of Mao’s rule on even the youngest of people. It reveals how Mao wanted people to work to support the country, this was under the communist ideal Mao followed. Many people were either denied school or trained in something useful for the country. I decided to put this under the political organization Universal because I thought that this showed Mao’s direction and implementation of his ideas, which led the