chapter 1

1960

BALAN, SOUTHWEST CHINA



To tell the tale of my birth, I must start not from the beginning, but from the end to my beginning. I was born twice, really. First when I tore through my mother's dark passage. The second time when the old medicine man saved me.

The young woman who gave birth to me meant to end it all, not just her life, but also mine, right at the moment of my sunrise. She was in a hurry to leap off the cliff atop Mount Balan, but I outraced her swollen legs and slipped out of her womb just as she struggled toward the edge of that fateful precipice. One was left to wonder why she did it, making herself a myth, leaping off the zenith of the mountain with me still attached to her by the rope of life, the entangled umbilical cord.

I burst through before she burst off, born in the air, hovering over it all. I imagine her flying off that rugged cliff like an eagle gliding downward, free from her nest, her moorings, her sins, or her final lament, to be forgotten by the wind that fluttered her youthful hair up as she rushed down. We, the twinned and wingless angels, free-fell. But the unthinkable happened. The hand of destiny intervened. I, the wailing newborn, falling in the wake of my mother along the face of the vine-crawling cliff, was suddenly caught in the branches of a tea tree growing out of a cave's mouth.

In one slow-motion second that could have lasted a lifetime, the umbilical cord snapped. Arrested by the two springy branches, I let out a frightful scream--my ode to the strenuous tea tree. My mother--the angel of my birth, my death--and I parted in the air, blood aspill, splattering the tea leaves. I bounced, suspended aloft by the branches of the blessed tree. She plunged farther, a diminishing dot of herself, then vanished into the secrecy of the valley below, never to be seen again. Why she chose to sing her death song this early in her life, I would only come to know later. For now, I was left dangling, as dangling as one could be.

But fate intervened once more. Grace descended upon me in the shape of a scrawny village medicine man, old and faithful. When he heard me crying and saw me caught on the wind-blasted cliff, he climbed down to fetch me as a monkey would. Fortunately, he was as nimble as one, for his vocation dictated that he roam the mountain ranges from peak to peak, from valley to valley, and from cave to cave in search of the rare ginseng and scarce swallows' spit only to be found in the capricious spots reached by birds.

He flung himself down, breaking through tree branches, missing a few footholds, nearly dashing himself to death. But on that given day heaven allowed only one death. Breathlessly, he got hold of me. That was the moment I call my second birth, one given me by the grace of Buddha through the hand of one who had done his virtuous deeds day and night, caring for a village full of sick and poor. I say Buddha's grace and it was rightly so, for had another man heard me and, Buddha willing, found his heart wanting to save the little bundle, whether he was a virtuous man or not, he might never have done what the medicine man did, for in the old man's heart rang a lonesome bell of childlessness. The cry I made, the cry he heard, as he would later recount, was that cry deep in the recesses of his soul. It was not just a cry of any boy, but that of his own blood.

He was inches away when a blast of wind nearly took me away from it all again. But, one arm holding to a tree root, he reached for me, catching my tiny leg just...

 

"From Shaolin to the sugarloaf mountains of Gwangdong to Tiananmen Square and the skyscrapers of New York: an epic novel that neatly distills modern Chinese history. Da Chen's elegantly written novel ends on the promise of redemption. . . ."

 

"Within this sweeping, ambitious, historical novel, there is a beautifully wrought story of young men coming of age, related to each other but strangers, and heading toward a breathtaking collision."

 

"This book is fantastic in every sense of the word--a saga of China that is at once exotic and universal, an epic tale of destiny entwined with history. The description of Shento's birth is one of the most original beginnings of a novel I have ever read, and it launches the novel with the generous imagination that is evident throughout. . . . Chinese family life, military tradition, and the steaming violence on the Vietnamese border are all depicted with the wide strokes of a great artist creating a timeless tale."

 

"Brothers begins as if in a dream. And like a dream you are captured by its first eerie lines: 'To tell the tale of my birth, I must start not from the beginning, but from the end to my beginning. I was born twice, really.' This is Shento speaking. His brother Tan speaks next. And an epic novel evolves out of their alternating accounts, with all the rich and exquisite detail you expect from such an artful writer as Da Chen. He deals in big emotions: revenge, love (both graphic and romantic), torture, and fealty. He gives us China, from the ordinary soul to the ruling elite. He takes you from Mao to Tiananmen Square and then beyond. If you're in the mood for a good atmospheric read, you won't find a better one."

 

Brothers by Da Chen
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