Praise for "Along the Roaring River"

"I was so completely taken with Hao Jiang Tian's memoir that I carried it halfway around 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" 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, "From Mao to Mozart and Isaac Stern in China"

""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 whichbinds them together. This is a book which makes us want to sing!"
--David Henry Hwang, playwright, Tony Award winner, "M. Butterfly"