The River Below

This may be the most powerful and beautiful book I have read in the past ten years. I would rank it far above Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier as an example of the hero's journey.The book presents a landscape of mastery and memory where our protagonist receives a classical Chinese education and presents himself to the world as a true man of art, elegance and passion.He falls in love with the beautiful feminine that is just too distant to be embraced and integrated. He experiences friendship that is complicated by a love triangle.He is dispossessed and terrorized by the worst tortures human's can endure and emerges to see true emptiness and the vision of the feminine in nature.The novel is a virtual tour of the Chinese mind and tradition and works at all levels -- character and education (the Confucian worldview) the love of a woman (the alien feminine in Chinese history), devoted friendship (the intensity of a Chinese friendship is something I hope everyone can experience), the power of nature and cycles (Taoism), the deepest terror and brutality of hell (totalitarianism), and deepest compassion and the purity of human intention (Buddhism), the constantly emerging world ablaze and transitory, emptiness and its infinite vista.I feel privileged to have found this book and other works by Cheng. His is a broad and deep way. Confucius taught that the responsibility of the human life is to develop our character to contribute to the world. But, truly we must wake up right now -- even when our hair is on fire.

If you were to read only the contents of Francois Cheng’s, "The River Below", you could easily believe you had just read a memoir translated from Chinese to French, and finally into English. In truth it is a novel that is bracketed by a Foreword and an ending that suggest the Author has presented the memoir of a Chinese Artist through some of the horrific events of 20th Century China. I cannot remember reading another book in this format, which I presume was used to maintain that the contents of the book were non-fiction when in truth it was a novel. The cover states it is a novel, and then you arrive at the forward and begin to wonder.The novel, like the culture it describes, is full of self-questioning. No event is seen as random, every occurrence has a meaning if only it is looked at correctly. The result is that throughout the book there is constant analysis occurring whether in rhetorical inward investigation, or by the teaching of others that hold to a given religion/philosophy. This process makes for a contemplative novel with a correspondingly slow pace. I generally have difficulty finishing works like this, however there was a familiar theme that made the work interesting to follow.Shakespeare was a master at setting up multiple conflicting relationships that even when based upon love would end in disaster. These relationships often took the form of a triangle that involved deception or events that were misinterpreted to defeat characters either spiritually, physically or both. Mr. Cheng I believe used this format to good effect as he placed the theme in 20th Century China as it moved into the horror that was Mao’s China, which is about as far away as one could get from where William staged his events.I am not suggesting this is nothing more than imitation. It is not. It is a well-written work that requires a bit of patience and does not succumb to being rushed no matter how quickly you may try to read it. When all this is combined with the unusual format the reading experience is unique and worthwhile even if it rarely, if ever, raises your pulse.

The main character of this book has enormous depth, emotional honesty, and courage. These qualities give his search for artistic integrity and his endurance of tremendous hardship and suffering profound emotional impact. The author uses a palette of rich and distinctive visual metaphors that tie the story together and underscore the main character's generous and enlightened heart. Before reading this book, I knew little about the differences in the vision of Chinese and Western Art or of the unimaginable horror visited on the Chinese people by the Mao years. This book has opened me up to knowing more about both. This is one of the best books I've read in a long, long time.