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A Tree Grows in Daicheng
Through interconnected stories spanning four decades, A Tree Grows in Daicheng is a rich, multilayered portrait of life, love, and longing as the neighbors on Rose Street grapple with disease and poverty, marriage and society, during a transformative time when China’s old ways wither and fade.
The tight-knit neighborhood of Rose Street, Daicheng, China, is an enclave seemingly untouched by the Cultural Revolution. But the butcher shops, schools, and photography studios that line the streets in tidy rows conceal the residents’ daily struggles to adapt to a rapidly changing world.
It’s here that a child known as the Boy grows up, tormented by school-yard bullies who taunt him for his neck deformity. The Boy shrinks away when even his teachers tease him for his “wonky head,” finding solace only in his friendship with another disabled boy and his unrequited love for the beautiful Luo Jia. When both of his companions disappear suddenly, the Boy is left alone with his cowardly father and revolutionary sister. Like his nation, it’s up to him to determine his own future.
The tight-knit neighborhood of Rose Street, Daicheng, China, is an enclave seemingly untouched by the Cultural Revolution. But the butcher shops, schools, and photography studios that line the streets in tidy rows conceal the residents’ daily struggles to adapt to a rapidly changing world.
It’s here that a child known as the Boy grows up, tormented by school-yard bullies who taunt him for his neck deformity. The Boy shrinks away when even his teachers tease him for his “wonky head,” finding solace only in his friendship with another disabled boy and his unrequited love for the beautiful Luo Jia. When both of his companions disappear suddenly, the Boy is left alone with his cowardly father and revolutionary sister. Like his nation, it’s up to him to determine his own future.
- GenresChina
430 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 6, 2017
30 people are currently reading
302 people want to read
About the author
Lu Nei
17 books2 followers小说家，1973年生，任职于上海市作家协会。2007年在《收获》杂志发表长篇小说《少年巴比伦》而受到关注，至2013年，发表于《收获》和《人民文学》共五部长篇小说。2014年以《天使坠落在哪里》为最终篇完成70万字的“追随三部曲”。
Announcing himself as "one of the least-educated young writers in China," Lu Nei seems to have profited rather than lost by a life that began in struggle. Since the age of 19 he held a series of menial jobs around China—drifting, exploring, fighting, and observing. His interest in literature began while he had a job watching dials in a factory, and plenty of reading time on his hands. Even now, with a certain level of critical success under his belt, he refuses to give up his day job in an advertising company.
Born in Suzhou, that city provides common background for both of his novels, Young Babylon and On the Trail of Her Travels. The first recounts the semi-farcical adventures of a young man much like himself, while the second is the story of a group of disaffected youth in a small town, who suddenly decide to take their futures into their own hands…
Announcing himself as "one of the least-educated young writers in China," Lu Nei seems to have profited rather than lost by a life that began in struggle. Since the age of 19 he held a series of menial jobs around China—drifting, exploring, fighting, and observing. His interest in literature began while he had a job watching dials in a factory, and plenty of reading time on his hands. Even now, with a certain level of critical success under his belt, he refuses to give up his day job in an advertising company.
Born in Suzhou, that city provides common background for both of his novels, Young Babylon and On the Trail of Her Travels. The first recounts the semi-farcical adventures of a young man much like himself, while the second is the story of a group of disaffected youth in a small town, who suddenly decide to take their futures into their own hands…
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 3, 2018
I wish I could go back in time and forget this book, simply so I could read it fresh again. This is a full solid story, with depth and well-rounded characters. LOVED it.
June 8, 2017
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
In a changing China, the effects of the Cultural Revolution are told from the viewpoint of a neighborhood on Rose Street. Boy, disfigured, finds himself alone and must attempt interaction with neighbors in order to survive.
In a changing China, the effects of the Cultural Revolution are told from the viewpoint of a neighborhood on Rose Street. Boy, disfigured, finds himself alone and must attempt interaction with neighbors in order to survive.
August 21, 2017
Disappointing! It felt like there was never a point to the message, unless that was the intended commentary for its plot. Whether the fault of writer or translator, it was very tedious to read.
April 23, 2018
I chose to read Lu Nei's A Tree Grows in Daicheng for the China stop on my Around the World in 80 Books challenge. It has been quite poorly reviewed, but having received a copy from Netgalley, I thought I would give it a go regardless. I did not enjoy the prose here at all; whether it is an issue with the translation, or with the original writing, I am unsure, but it felt too matter-of-fact and chatty for my liking. I did not connect with it at all, and gave up on it after a while.
June 18, 2023
无可救药的喜欢上了里面每一个人物
December 27, 2019
Always gritty, often sad, often rough and always courageous - this interleaved set of stories about ordinary people in an ordinary street in an ordinary city provides deeply touching insights into life in China from the 1960s to the 1990s.
It starts around the same time as the Cultural Revolution (can you believe it? only 50 years ago) and ends in the early 1990s - a period of dazzlingly fast change for China. At one level, Lu Nei's characters are like him - ordinary people doing menial jobs, if they can get any jobs at all - and seemingly not at the forefront of China's many revolutionary changes. But through their lives and their loves, their hopes and their bitter disappointments we get a deeper insight into the astonishing mix of courage, acceptance and enterprise with which so many people have met the changes.
The story is mostly narrated by a "wonky-headed boy" and its tone is overwhelmingly matter of fact and direct. His leading characters are all misfits or outsiders in some way - mentally, physically, socially and/or economically disabled. Yet as we know, people are not really disabled, merely differently abled as this book bears testimony.
The novel starts in 1966, the same year as the Cultural Revolution - which we encounter peripherally as one of the locals is unfairly denounced as a "counterrevolutionary scoundrel" and driven to suicide. Reading this while I was in China, working mostly with people in their 30s, it became more and more clear to me that their parents had lived their adult lives in this world.
Quite a lot of the action takes place amongst young people and we get a sense of the scale of things by the school names - for example "Number 22 Middle School." The kids alternative between cruelty and kindness to each other, as kids do. There's a readiness to turn to violence that is scary for relative softies like me.
Amongst the adults, there is an ongoing thread about dancing and dance halls - from the early years where such dalliance was outlawed (except for Mao himself), to the period of early opening up where dancing was possible but something as raunchy as the tango formed the untouchable extreme boundary, to the early 90s where gangs controlled dance halls that were really raw hookup joints. The narrator's sweet but often ineffective father manages to navigate most of this terrain with a gentlemanly verve, and battered acceptance of being beaten up several times.
By the end of the book, we are in the early 1990s and it's already clear that those who can take advantage of the new opportunities for entrepreneurship are going to benefit the most. What the large scope of the novel helped me see is that these were just the next in a long series of sweeping changes in this extraordinary country - and that its people are quite remarkably able to combine stoic acceptance of what they can't control with enthusiastic embracing of new opportunities. All this in an environment that is consistently tough.
It starts around the same time as the Cultural Revolution (can you believe it? only 50 years ago) and ends in the early 1990s - a period of dazzlingly fast change for China. At one level, Lu Nei's characters are like him - ordinary people doing menial jobs, if they can get any jobs at all - and seemingly not at the forefront of China's many revolutionary changes. But through their lives and their loves, their hopes and their bitter disappointments we get a deeper insight into the astonishing mix of courage, acceptance and enterprise with which so many people have met the changes.
The story is mostly narrated by a "wonky-headed boy" and its tone is overwhelmingly matter of fact and direct. His leading characters are all misfits or outsiders in some way - mentally, physically, socially and/or economically disabled. Yet as we know, people are not really disabled, merely differently abled as this book bears testimony.
The novel starts in 1966, the same year as the Cultural Revolution - which we encounter peripherally as one of the locals is unfairly denounced as a "counterrevolutionary scoundrel" and driven to suicide. Reading this while I was in China, working mostly with people in their 30s, it became more and more clear to me that their parents had lived their adult lives in this world.
Quite a lot of the action takes place amongst young people and we get a sense of the scale of things by the school names - for example "Number 22 Middle School." The kids alternative between cruelty and kindness to each other, as kids do. There's a readiness to turn to violence that is scary for relative softies like me.
Amongst the adults, there is an ongoing thread about dancing and dance halls - from the early years where such dalliance was outlawed (except for Mao himself), to the period of early opening up where dancing was possible but something as raunchy as the tango formed the untouchable extreme boundary, to the early 90s where gangs controlled dance halls that were really raw hookup joints. The narrator's sweet but often ineffective father manages to navigate most of this terrain with a gentlemanly verve, and battered acceptance of being beaten up several times.
By the end of the book, we are in the early 1990s and it's already clear that those who can take advantage of the new opportunities for entrepreneurship are going to benefit the most. What the large scope of the novel helped me see is that these were just the next in a long series of sweeping changes in this extraordinary country - and that its people are quite remarkably able to combine stoic acceptance of what they can't control with enthusiastic embracing of new opportunities. All this in an environment that is consistently tough.
July 6, 2017
I received this book as a part of a Goodreads giveaway and was encouraged to give an honest review.
This book had one high point, which I'll mention first before I say all the reasons this book sucked. Firstly, the book almost had some poetic moments, and while I didn't like the writing style as a whole, there were moments and quotes that I actually enjoyed and resonated with me. However, the problem is that the story felt as if it had no purpose or meaning, and so these quotes were extremely out of place, especially when they were surrounded by really awkward quotes. Part of this might be the translation and I'm sure it would be a different experience if I had read it in its original language, but this was a problem throughout the book.
I guess that to me the story was pointless and any hurtful moments were only mentioned as something that happened instead of being mentioned as a tool to make some statement on the affairs in China in the time the book takes place. While it did open up a part of history that I didn't know too much about, it wasn't done in a way that gave me any eye openers, but was rather just a sequence of events, switching from first to third person, sometimes using character names and sometimes not. The whole effect was that as I was reading it, I couldn't wait for it to end. I didn't care about any of the characters in the book, because they were just part of the events that took place. I was left thinking, what was the point? Why am I reading this? What is the author trying to tell me and what is he getting at? It was an attempt to write a really deep novel that completely failed. It was, in short, a disappointment.
This book had one high point, which I'll mention first before I say all the reasons this book sucked. Firstly, the book almost had some poetic moments, and while I didn't like the writing style as a whole, there were moments and quotes that I actually enjoyed and resonated with me. However, the problem is that the story felt as if it had no purpose or meaning, and so these quotes were extremely out of place, especially when they were surrounded by really awkward quotes. Part of this might be the translation and I'm sure it would be a different experience if I had read it in its original language, but this was a problem throughout the book.
I guess that to me the story was pointless and any hurtful moments were only mentioned as something that happened instead of being mentioned as a tool to make some statement on the affairs in China in the time the book takes place. While it did open up a part of history that I didn't know too much about, it wasn't done in a way that gave me any eye openers, but was rather just a sequence of events, switching from first to third person, sometimes using character names and sometimes not. The whole effect was that as I was reading it, I couldn't wait for it to end. I didn't care about any of the characters in the book, because they were just part of the events that took place. I was left thinking, what was the point? Why am I reading this? What is the author trying to tell me and what is he getting at? It was an attempt to write a really deep novel that completely failed. It was, in short, a disappointment.
September 28, 2020
So, when you have a family reunion and all your family tells stories, this is how this book is written. These characters feel alive and that you really knew them by the time the book ends. Characters are simply and fabulously well-formed. Although, there is no closure to the story line at the end of the book which also makes you think that this is just like real life because stories don't always having an ending point and do in fact just live on and on.
Half way point in the story, all the ballroom dancing made the Kink's song "Come Dancing" get stuck in my head!
The problem I have is with the chapter editing because they are extremely long in some sectional "parts" of the book, and then concise and well edited in other sectional "parts." With each part edited into chapters differently makes you think that the author probably wrote each "part" seperately and then possibly edited the content to match and flow. This inconsistency on format was my only issue.
Half way point in the story, all the ballroom dancing made the Kink's song "Come Dancing" get stuck in my head!
The problem I have is with the chapter editing because they are extremely long in some sectional "parts" of the book, and then concise and well edited in other sectional "parts." With each part edited into chapters differently makes you think that the author probably wrote each "part" seperately and then possibly edited the content to match and flow. This inconsistency on format was my only issue.
July 10, 2017
I was sent a free copy of this book for an honest review and honestly I couldn't finish it. I picked it up a while ago and started it and put it down. I picked it up again and pushed myself to continue on, stop reading as I have come to realize I do not have to finish every book I start, and this is on of less than 5. Maybe the story is lost in translation, it was son jumpy between rebels and conservatives and they were here and then they were there and I really didn't get a fell for the story or the people. Normally I do not do reviews but only ratings as I feel people should have a chance to read with out prejudging but I felt obligated to review since I got this book for free. Will be a while before I enter another giveaway.
September 18, 2019
I am sure that in it's native language it read well, but the translation leaves a lot to be desired. Or maybe not. It could just be a poorly written book. I oftentimes choose foreign books in translations hoping to get insight into another culture. This just did not fit the bill. Sorry. Gave up and did not finish.
I received a Kindle arc from Netgalley in exchange for a fair review.
I received a Kindle arc from Netgalley in exchange for a fair review.
August 26, 2017
Chinese opera
The is a book I received through a Goodreads giveaway.
This book reads like a Chinese opera which usually does not have a uplifting story line which will be different for those readers from the west.
The is a book I received through a Goodreads giveaway.
This book reads like a Chinese opera which usually does not have a uplifting story line which will be different for those readers from the west.
March 5, 2018
I received this through GoodReads First Reads
I found this book difficult to read, it seemed to ramble with no particular pathway.
I found this book difficult to read, it seemed to ramble with no particular pathway.
February 24, 2021
It's like a Chinese version of Gone With the Wind ... a long-winding tale of what happens to a family over the course of 40 years. Some epic historical events in between, but most of it is just normal, boring, everyday life.
April 29, 2022
"我一直记得九○年的春天。那次我认为自己遇到了她，我经常觉得 那才是真正的结束。故事结束在这里正如街道结束在身后，时间结束在眼前。"
May 16, 2022
我果然只有在家躺着才能好好看书。
很少会按创作顺序一本一本的看一个作者的书。所以看到这本，就像看到多兰那部母亲一样，会不禁感慨，啊，小路长大了。你能从这本书里读到路小路式青春的蛛丝马迹，但同时又多了很多成熟的东西，故事也好，行文也好。
很少会按创作顺序一本一本的看一个作者的书。所以看到这本，就像看到多兰那部母亲一样，会不禁感慨，啊，小路长大了。你能从这本书里读到路小路式青春的蛛丝马迹，但同时又多了很多成熟的东西，故事也好，行文也好。
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews