To do so would have been suicide. Food, in fact, becomes the book's main theme. It is really about what malnourishment does to the human spirit and what starving men will do to each other. Zhang is not above joining the other vulture-like convicts who uncannily appear to scavenge other people's rice bowls when death is near. The account is unrelieved by any sympathetic, or for that matter unsympathetic, portraits of his fellow convicts or guards.
Characterization is, unfortunately, the weakest aspect of the tale.
But the language of My Bodhi Tree, admirably translated by Martha Avery, is suitably stark and blunt. It is in camp that he loses his intuitive taste for language. Buddha achieved enlightenment while meditating under a bodhi tree, but it is difficult to understand how Zhang Xianliang can compare his two decades of imprisonment to peaceful solitude under the shade tree. And My Bodhi Tree is a special reminder of just how resilient the human spirit is. It involves assessing motivation, giving and asking for feedback, and increasing one's own effectiveness.