ALONG THE ROARING RIVER: My Wild Ride From Mao to the Met

"An engaging memoir."

--Alex Ross, The New Yorker

"Tian brings a unique perspective to the cultural divide between China and the West. His journey...is so riveting and filled with fascinating detail that it reads like a page-turning novel.... The writing throughout is without pretense and almost artless in its directness, yet it resonates with humanity, candor, and passion. All opera fans as well as readers interested in the social and political history of China will be captivated by this inspirational book. Highly recommended.

--Library Journal (starred review)

"Tian's adventures are driven by pluck, yuan (fate) and romance, and spun with a raconteur's skill, the narrative's chronological rush spiked with apt foreshadowing, flashbacks, and endearing humor."

--Publisher's Weekly

"I was so completely taken with Hao Jiang Tian's memoir that I carried it halfway around the world to finish reading it. Tian let me into his world, one filled with astonishing events and candid details. He has a natural storytelling voice in finding the strange and humorous ironies that link past and present. Along the Roaring River is as riveting as a well-told novel.

--Amy Tan

"I have sung eight operas with Tian since his Met debut, and now I understand how the passion and strength in that beautiful voice were created in desperate and dangerous times. Tian has had a life worthy of an opera!"

--Placido Domingo

"I was deeply moved by Tian's story, how he struggled to survive in the maelstrom of Mao's China and then how he toiled to succeed as an artist in America.... It is no surprise that music--like it did for me--took him to a higher place, and it was thrilling to read how music fueled this young man's wild imagination and provided a passion for living."

--Quincy Jones

"Along the Roaring River takes us through an extraordinary life filled with humor, suspense, and an operatic-sized heart. From the deprivations and chaos of China's Cultural Revolution to the excitement and glamour of opera's great stages, Tian's gripping and moving memoir spans many different worlds, discovering in each the common humanity which binds them together. This is a book which makes us want to sing!"

--David Henry Hwang, playwright, Tony Award winner, M. Butterfly

"Fascinting memoir...a riveting read."

--Opera News

"Along the Roaring River is a gripping and inspiring account of how an artist transcended the savagery of the Cultural Revolution to take his place on the world's greatest opera stages. This book reads like a suspense novel."

--Allan Miller, filmmaker, Academy Award-winning From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China

"Candid, funny, earthy, touching, Along the Roaring River will delight anyone intrigued with the world of music or the civilization of China. Hao Jiang Tian, strong-willed and rebellious, is a born story-teller, with a gift for friendship and a lust for life. He revels in the freedom that music and life in America have given him with. These pages shine with the spirit he has brought to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera."

--Ross Terrill, author Mao: A Biography

ALONG THE ROARING RIVER: My Wild Ride From Mao to the Met

ALONG THE ROARING RIVER is an inspiring, romantic, thrilling memoir of the first Chinese-born opera singer to achieve fame and a lasting success on world stages.

A wild child living on his own during the Cultural Revolution, assigned to hard labor in a factory for seven years, then nearly being thrown out of a music program for wiggling his hips like Elvis in performance, Hao Jiang Tian seemed an unlikely candidate for Western classical music stardom. This compelling book shares his operatic tales of love, art, and survival that lead to the Metropolitan Opera, and on to the world’s music capitals, often alongside Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti, where he forged the way for Asian singers in an often reluctant opera world.

Born in 1954, Tian was forced to study piano by his People’s Liberation Army musician parents but won a reprieve when his piano teacher was punished during the Cultural Revolution. Then the boy smashed to bits his parents’ treasured record collection. After his loyal Communist parents were themselves sent away and he was on his own, he taught himself to play accordion and entertained schoolmates and then his often-illiterate factory mates in the Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Team. (He also learned to play the guitar, considered a “decadent” instrument.) Just before Mao’s death, he tricked his way into a voice training program, and ultimately left China for the U.S. during the “Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign” in 1983.

Not until he was 38 and had found his one true love did he first gain a footing in the opera world; his first job was at the Met, where he has sung every year since 1991. Inevitably the book draws the reader back to China, where Tian, now an American citizen, attempts to steer young Chineseartists through today’s realities, to comprehend the startling changes that have taken place since he departed–and to foster new Chinese music and talent for the world’s appreciation.

LOIS B. MORRIS

ALONG THE ROARING RIVER: My Wild Ride From Mao to the Met