Author Description

In this lyrical autobiography of growing up from the birth of the People s Republic, through the chaotic years of the Great Leap Forward, and on into the Cultural Revolution Bei Dao uses his extraordinary gifts as a poet and storyteller to create another Beijing, a beautiful memory palace of endless alleyways and corridors, where personal narrative mixes with the momentous history he lived through. At the center of the book are his parents and siblings, and their everyday life together through famine and festival.Open Up, City Gate is told in an episodic, fluid style that moves back and forth through the poet s childhood, recreating the smells and sounds, the laughter and the danger, of a boy s coming of age during a time of enormous change and upheaval."