Moying Li's SNOW FALLING IN SPRING reviewed in the New York Times

Mao’s Little Helper

By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: August 15, 2008

Life in Mao Zedong’s China is so exciting for little Moying Li. The grown-ups talk of a Great Leap Forward that will allow China to overtake Britain. Her family even gives over their lovely courtyard to a belching, smoky furnace so that the neighborhood can supply steel for the Great Leap. Neighbors contribute their cooking pots and cutlery for the cause. When Li’s grandmother asks if anyone has seen her cleaver, the little girl proudly responds, “Yes, I helped our country with it.” The family retrieves the big kettle and some spoons from the pile, but the cleaver, as she recalls, “had joined its comrades in the burning fire, doing its share for China.” Everyone has a good laugh over that one.

Then there is the war on the sparrows, a crusade to eliminate the accused scourge of crops. Li and her brother, Di Di, cheer lustily as her father’s pellet gun fells one feathered threat after another.

But things do not go as hoped. Making good steel, it turns out, is more difficult than it looks, and the government rejects the lot, leaving the neighbors downhearted and decidedly less well equipped in their kitchens.

As for the sparrows, well, the government had not considered the fact that sparrows eat insects. Crops are ravaged. In coming years, as a result of natural and man-made disasters, millions die.

And then things really begin to get bad.

Small tragedies are the prelude to great ones in “Snow Falling in Spring: Coming of Age in China During the Cultural Revolution,” a memoir of the wrenching years of Mao. With the Olympics bringing renewed attention to China, it can be easy to forget the pain that went before, pain that occurred in living memory. But this memoir makes those times unforgettable. Simply and hauntingly told, the book is written for young readers, but adults can learn a great deal from it as well.

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