I won this book through a goodreads first-reads contest

This is a memoir about a boy and his family, and his childhood during the communist revolution in China. After his grandmother becomes obsessed with keeping to her religious convictions of how to be buried, which is outlawed, the family must make sacrifices to give her what she wants. This is a book on how it affects their lives, and the way times change time and time again in China. Honestly, I wanted to read this book because I wanted to know a more first-person story of the Chinese revolution, and how someone felt about living under the rule of communism. This story gave me all that, and more, because I never expected to like the characters so much. It was so real, from him joining the little red guard as a young boy, and being a model communist child, to later on seeing the outside world for the first time while he studies at a UK university. It was interesting how he'd been told the UK lived, and how he compared that to how it really was.

Another thing about this book is that it neither supports or openly objects to communism, it manages to not be a very political book, just a book about the life of a boy. Now, he does mention certain things he objected to, as a child and now, and key events to changing China for the better, but nothing seriously political. I like how easily he was able to explain the changes that have literally swept over this giant country. Of course, he also talks about the negative changes of their history being lost and traditions ignored towards the end. Overall, a very good read that kept me interested the whole way through. I loved the glimpse into this mans family and was saddened by certain events. I was glad that overall disaster never seemed to strike them, and who knows, maybe it is grandpa watching over them because of his good burial spot.