Rating: 
Summary: One of the most un-science fictional books I've ever read.
Review: That includes non-sf by Hawthorne, London, Voltaire, & Dante. I decided to read it because I liked "The Lincoln Train" , a story that originally appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science fiction, a great deal. However it didn't even readd like a novel since the different threads of the story only tenuously connected. Strangely, though I can talk longer about what I liked then what I didn't like. The part about the Martian goat farmer I loved. That's partly because it had the only likeable heterosexual male I can remember. I also loved the insights into Chinese culture. Even the parts in Canada were interesting. The book is quite real yet somehow ,for me, the book is less then the some of its parts. I can't say why it struck me that way, but it did. However if you like gay or feminist fiction I think you'll like it. I give it a 5 out of 10 actually.
Rating: 
Summary: First-class writing . . .
Review: This book had been on my "to read" list for some time, but it moved to the top of the list after a co-worker, a rabid right-winger, read it and then fulminated against the notion that the U.S. could ever become a socialist state. The First Amendment doesn't protect anti-Americanism, he said, and the book should be banned and the author arrested. Actually, I believe he would have been quite comfortable in the authoritarian future America in which Zhong Shan Zhang lives and works. "Zhong Shan" translates to "China Mountain," but it's also the Mandarin version of the Cantonese name "Sun Yat Sen." It's like an American being named "George Washington Jones." Zhang is an ABC -- an American-born Chinese -- who gets by, barely, as a Construction Tech in New York. More important, he's only half-Chinese; his mother was Hispanic, but his genetic inheritance from his Chinese father was enhanced by gene-splicing. Since all the best jobs and top corporate positions go to Chinese (the most racist people in the world), every little bit helps. But even more important than his problematical background, Zhang is set apart by being gay -- in a world in which deviance is dealt with by exile to the Mars colony or by a bullet in the back of the head. The plot line is really pretty simple: Zhang loses his job after his boss tries to fix him up with his extremely ugly daughter (who doesn't know about his sexual orientation), he takes a job in semi-desperation as the only Construction Tech at a research station above the Arctic Circle (where he learns to value the dawn after five months of darkness), he parlays his hardship assignment into admission to Nanjing University to study engineering (where he finally begins to flower as a Daoist engineer/architect), and he returns to New York in search of long-delayed professional success and personal fulfillment. It's the richness of the author's portrayal of a possible, quite believable future that make this book so fascinating: The details of kite-racing, the fundamental differences between Chinese and Western attitudes (McHugh studied for some time in the PRC), the mix of very high-tech and very low, the internal politics of a commune on Mars, and the sheer prosaic-ness of people just trying to get by, to survive in a largely uncaring world. Zhang is a fully realized character, but so are his friends and acquaintances. And so are the other major characters in New York and on Mars, all of whose stories gradually come together late in the book. This is a beautiful piece of writing.
Rating: 
Summary: Plotless but Absorbing
Review: This book is about a slightly far-fetched, but wonderfully well-envisioned future. Maureen McHugh has the talent of making one feel thoroughly immersed in the main characters' universe without using any of the verbal trickery or shock tactics habitually employed by her contemporaries in the so-called 'cyberpunk' movement. There's a very singular strangeness about the world as she imagines it being run by the communist Chinese, and I found myself puzzled by the end as to whether this came from the fact that such an arrangement normally would seem so unlikely, or from the fact that McHugh made it seem like such a natural development out of present cultural and economic trends.I can see how the novel's plotlessness and the sense of irresolution that one gets at the end might have been off-putting to some, but I found that Zhang himself was the sort of character to whom this style of narrative was best suited - he's reflective without being particularly deep, and ambitious without being particularly resolute. I did want to know more about him than I'd found out by the end of the book, and about the two fascinating characters who form the book's weirdly free-floating sub-plot (which takes place on Mars). But this can't be considered a weakness of the novel, surely.
Rating:
Summary: We don't need no stinkin' plot!
Review: This was a good read. It had an engaging style and believable characters. I read through the whole thing, enjoying it thoroughly, before it even clicked that this book doesn't have an overall plot. If you decide to pick it up trust me, plot or no plot, you'll like it.
Rating: 
Summary: Nevermind.
Review: This was SUPPOSED to be one of the most unscience fictional books ever. I read on the author's webpage she was trying to be opposite to what science fiction readers expect. So we get a story with no plot, where none of the characters do anything important in the grand scheme of things, & nothing much happens. Yes that is more like real life, & perhaps this is the great American anti-science fiction novel she was hoping for, but a part of me says so what. Do you actually like said novel? Well, although I like parts of it ultimately my answer is no. I will give her credit for taking the road less traveled & doing a fair job of it.
Rating: 
Summary: availability
Review: Tor Books will publishing a trade paperback edition of CHINA MOUNTAIN ZHANG in May of 1996, bless their souls.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent characters
Review: While I concur that this book lacks a central, driving plot, I disagree that this lack implies some fault with the book. In fact, McHugh does an excellent job of making the characters the plot; after all, we've all seen more of the 'future' in corny sci-fi novels than we care to recount.What makes this book different is the way McHugh seems to be pointing out that even though the world is so different, the people are still human - something I have found incredibly lacking in other books from this genre. I was able to connect with all of the characters, which isn't something you generally find in the standard sci-fi novel. They are usually androids, either by design or signficant inability to write a convincing character on the author's part; this novel breaks the mold.
Rating:
Summary: China Mountain Zhang, by Maureen F. McHugh
Review: While some people have complained of the novel's lack of plot, I feel that it's perfectly balanced and in many ways a plot would get in the way. The book is the story of an engineer named Zhang, or Raphael, in a world were Chinese Communism dominates. Zhang isn't important, or out to save the world. He's merely trying to find himself and at the same time, find someone else. McHugh's prose is clear and evocative, I found myself pulled deeply into the world of the book and couldn't put it down. Her inventions for the future are fascinating. The technology is never separate or thrown in, the characters interactions with the imagined technology of the future are just as interesting as the characters and the technology alone. I could go on and on about how wonderful this book was, I enjoyed immensely and it also made me think deeply about human interaction and interaction with their environment. I cannot recommend it strongly enough.
Rating:
Summary: A different view of the future
Review: Wow, this one really has a different view of the future; it really made me think. In McHugh's future, a communist revolution has taken place in America, and China is the dominant superpower! The interesting part is McHugh's details about living in this very different future. The characters are interesting and very believable. The book reads like a series of short stories, not a novel, although eventually all the sections about the title character do tie together into something like a plot. In general, this isn't the one to read if what you look for is cool tech, but nevertheless the section about a holistic engineering is pretty neat, and rings very true-- if McHugh isn't actually an engineer, she does seem to have a feel for what it's about.
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