A Little Tiger in the Chinese Night: An Autobiography in Art

Zhang, a Chinese artist who has lived in Canada since the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989, ``tells and paints'' this autobiography, which not only summarizes his own experiences but offers insights into ``the human dimension of China'' over the past half-century. Seven years old when the Communists gained control of China in 1949, he remembers his pride upon receiving the red scarf of the Young Pioneers. His high school education included farmwork, dam construction and ``self-criticism meetings.'' He describes severe food shortages and other privations, but these cede quickly to the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, during which his family was persecuted. In 1984, Zhang left China for the first time and went to France, where that country's relative wealth convinced him that ``everything I had been told, everything I had believed, was a lie.'' As he watches a boy sketch a Rodin sculpture, the middle-aged artist is flooded with an awareness of lost opportunities. Zhang's mural-like paintings light up the paradox of good intentions coexisting with cruel zeal. A quiet voice narrates events that carry their own thunder. Maps and a historical outline are appended. Ages 12-up. (Nov.)