China's+Son

Ryan Wood We read the book China's Son by Da Chen. This book is about a boy named Da who lives in China. In the book, his main goal is to get to college, but he must overcome many obstacles. One obstacle is that he is the son of a landlord. In 1962, landlords were hated. People felt that they ruined their lives by making them work for little at all. Because of that, people wanted to throw Da out of school or hurt him. On page 3, a kid actually slaps Da in the face when he was watching a parade. Kids pick on him constantly, and he can't do anything to stop it. Another obstacle is that he is hanging out with bad kids. Some of friends drink, smoke, and gamble, and Da joined in. Near the end of the book, his friends have to run from the police. Finally, education and high self-expectations tried to get in Da's way. Very few people got into college at time, in fact, the year of Da's examinations, only the top 100 scores made it to college. Not only that, but Da wanted to get into the top college which was in Beijing. To make it in there could seem nearly impossible, but a hard worker like Da might have a chance.

Jack Bulk

this is a map of putian, where Da Chen lives. the picture far above is our symbol for the book. it is a picture of a book called Hopes and Dreams. it has several chapters. College, school, friends, acceptance, and money.

Ryan Wood Now, I am going to talk about the main character, Da. Da literally means prosperity. Da is smart, hard working, and musical. As a young school boy, he was the top student.When he was in fourth grade, he scored 100% in everything. In high school, Da had one of the highest English grades in the country. One example of Da being hard working is that he gets up at sunrise to practice his bamboo flute. Another example is that he worked as hard as he could to learn how to play the violin. Also, after deciding he needed to work even harder, he did school work almost all day. He would only let himself sleep for four hours. Da is also musical. In the book Da played the flute extremely well. He also became a master of the violin.

Josh Pincus

Max Magendantz

My job in the group was to find connections between __Animal Farm__ and our book __China's Son.__ I'll just list the matches.


 * Chairman Mao = Napoleon
 * Da Chen's family = Mollie
 * The Commune = The sheep
 * The poor families of Yellow Stone = Boxer