Pao

Pao is the novel's first person narrator, its central character and protagonist. The book documents and explores events and circumstances over fifty years of his life, from childhood to late middle age. He is the child of social revolutionaries, both biologically and ideologically. Both the internal (emotional, psychological, intellectual, moral) and the external (where he lives, how he earns a living) circumstances of his life defined by what his elders believe about the relationship between the working classes and the monied classes - in Pao's mind, the oppressed and the oppressor, the exploited and the exploiters. He becomes involved in organized crime (see "Objects/Places") at a very early age, working his way through the ranks of the organization run by mentor Zhang and taking his place at the head of the organization by the time he is twenty-one years old. Think about it - a widespread, multifaceted...