"Beware of What You Want!"

Robert Abel's RIDING THE TIGER begins with Arnold Fisher's confession of multiple crimes. The Chinese Ministry of Justice orders Fisher to describe his activities and relationships during his residency in Beijing as a programmer in an electrical engineering firm. Frustrated with the bureaucratic stagnancy and monotony of this job, Fisher begins to connect to that famous American entrepreneurial spirit and manages to share the promise of wealth with some new acquaintances from inside and outside his workplace. The opportunities seem limitless for all involved and the reader chuckles frequently at the funny escapades that follow. Business, mystery, and romance glide through a turbulent river of change unfolding in The People's Republic of China.

Meet a sweet and beautiful, young girl who becomes acquainted with Fisher only after she first steals the hat that protects his bald head from severe sunburn; a coworker who has great ideas and imagination but must plan the most unobtrusive possible implementation of same; a colleague who brings fanaticism, paranoia, and hypochondria to new levels; and a work unit taxi driver who ferries Fisher everywhere but also introduces him to the wonderful business of selling watermelons. All awaken Fisher's new "vision" about China.

Underlying all of these characters and occurrences, many more than are mentioned here, is a potential that seems innate in all people, no matter what one's political orientation. Fisher best characterizes it in the character of the Yin/Yang Woman, "... a rolling synthesis of many seeming contradictions...her greatest virtue is her survivability, her loving gumption."

Beware! Rollicking along with the author's numerous adventures and enjoying his earthy humor that so appalls his captors, the reader begins to sense a rising tension and fear that begin to dissipate the effect of the continuous humor in every chapter. Abel is a brilliant master of parody in the manner that he gradually exposes the consequences of Communist policies with a "free trade" practice. Empathy and excitement gradually evolve into their opposite experiences as the reader seems to foresee the devastating end way before the characters actually experience them.

One could read a score of nonfiction books on the very same themes so artfully exposed in this small but oh so potent novel, however, those other books will never show the clash and conflicts inherent in the changes blatant throughout the People's Republic of China. Policies and practices, after all is said and done, are "lived" by very real people who manifest the same needs and engage in their most meaningful activities since the dawn of humanity. One cannot help but have numerous questions, at the unexpectedly clever end of this story, about how the Chinese experiment with a new economic vision is really affecting the Chinese spirit and how it will all eventually unfold.

What and who flourishes, and what and who is really betrayed, as each side evades and manipulates the other?

Finely done, Robert Abel!

Reviewed by Viviane Crystal
Posted April 22, 2003

Summary

English teacher Arnold Fisher is arrested and detained in a Beijing police station. Fisher's participation in the building of an illegal capitalist empire and the death of a cadre has left him in a tight spot. In the course of his self-criticism and deposition to the Chinese Ministry of Justice, punctuated by his captor's occasional questions, Fisher discovers who has betrayed him, and whom he has, in turn, betrayed.