[The Blue Mountains of China] is an impressive achievement. Although the problem of didacticism and the "syntactical awkwardness" in Wiebe's style—which leads to some very murky writing in places—are … obtrusive weaknesses …, they are more than offset by the novel's strengths. In The Blue Mountains of China Rudy Wiebe not only vividly recounts the history of a segment of the Mennonite people, but, more importantly, he presents a complex judgment of the Mennonites and the modern world, and compellingly dramatizes his own radically Christian vision. (p. 50)

For Rudy Wiebe, and the Mennonites he presents in his novel, the "kinds of things that we struggle with" are primarily questions of religious belief. However, the struggle for faith and a truly Christian way of life is beset by many difficulties: the suffering in life, the attractions of the secular materialistic world, and, particularly for the Mennonites, the temptation to isolate themselves from the rest of the world.

Wiebe tells the Mennonites' history and explores his central themes in a book with a very unusual and complex structure. Many of the thirteen chapters of the novel read as almost self-contained stories, but Wiebe connects them in part by an intricate series of cross-references that help explain previous chapters and look forward to the ensuing ones…. The primary source of unity and continuity in the novel, however, is provided by the four chapters narrated by Frieda Friesen. (pp. 50-1)

[Frieda's temptation] scene has a crucial structural and thematic significance in the novel. Frieda's faith is strengthened here, and, of equal importance, the nature of her temptation is deliberately left ambiguous, for what is being emphasized is her resistance to any temptation. But in much of the rest of the novel Wiebe examines the experience of Mennonites who succumb to various "temptations." The main structural principle of the first half of the book, in fact, is to alternate the presentation of Frieda's faith with a chapter showing a Mennonite struggling with the confines of the religious tradition.

Jakob Friesen IV is in many ways a contrasting figure to Frieda…. Jakob never recovers from the guilt of abandoning his son and comes, unlike Frieda, to doubt God's justice. (p. 52)

Wiebe's attitude towards the Mennonites and the modern world is complex, and can't be ascertained from any single chapter. "The Well," which is in certain ways complementary to "Over the Red Line," examining the same issues, presents a different picture…. The trip made to the well by Anna Friesen, Frieda's daughter, dramatizes the choice between two kinds of life. And now for the first time Wiebe criticizes the conservatism of the Mennonites who have come to South America. The Indian women they encounter have a freedom and naturalness that the Mennonites distrust. (pp. 55-6)

It is not, however, primarily the Indians that cause the conservative Kanadier to worry, but the Russlander Mennonites—those who have become "modern" and those who, like Jakob Friesen, had stayed in Russia until 1929…. (p. 56)

The ultimate temptation that confronts a Mennonite, however, is to lose faith because of personal suffering. Jakob Friesen IV … in chapter eight, "The Cloister of the Lilies," as a prisoner in Siberia in 1932, is unable to accept his suffering without misgiving. As Jakob and another prisoner are being moved they stumble onto a cloister; within they discover a picture of a row of lilies hidden beneath the grime on a wall. This seems to symbolize Jakob's own relation to his faith; it is buried, hidden, indeed almost lost. As they wait out the blizzard a man arrives with his wife, who is dying, and they are desperately trying to reach home…. The woman is raped by the guards, yet she and her husband endure, and his advice to Jakob is "Survive."… Unlike Jakob, the man not only accepts his suffering but is able to affirm that "God is good." Jakob is at the point of losing his faith entirely, or at least doubting it; at the end of the novel he claims he "believes nothing." Yet Jakob is obsessed with the man's ambiguous statement: "Whatever the man had said … seemed for an instant to blaze with a kind of holy wisdom that was." Jakob's attempts to understand the statement show that he is still struggling with his faith, and it is because of this struggle that later, as an old man, he is attracted to John Reimer.

Having examined various Mennonites in conflict with their faith, Wiebe begins to emphasize more directly, in the second half of the novel, the kind of Christian response he himself admires. David Epp … in chapter nine, "Drink Ye All of It," represents the ethical ideal in Wiebe's religious vision. David and his family, with a group of Mennonites, escape from Russia into China, but David fears that the Mennonites left behind may be punished for their act. He decides, therefore, that he must leave his family and return to Russia to see if he can possibly exonerate the other Mennonites. He is giving up his freedom, and probably his life, in what may be a quixotic gesture. But the heroic nature of his act reverberates throughout the rest of the novel in the lives of those who come after him…. In his radical concern for others and in his willingness to sacrifice himself, David Epp shows himself to be a true follower of Christ. (pp. 57-8)

The problem of the lack of religious faith in the modern world is confronted directly by Wiebe in the last two chapters of the novel. Here he examines the radical responses of two men appalled both by the materialism of modern life and by the insularity of other Mennonites. "The Vietnam Call of Samuel V. Reimer" is accurately described by W. J. Keith as a "biblical parallel-cum-parody (I Samuel 3) which succeeds in being both humorous and serious at the same time." Samuel is called by God to go and proclaim peace in Vietnam. Wiebe apparently wants us to believe in the authenticity of Samuel's voice, but, in any case, in showing the resistance to Samuel and his mission, Wiebe presents his critique of the modern world. There is a total lack of faith and an inability to believe in the very possibility that God would still speak directly to man…. Samuel Reimer achieves a sense of what, in Wiebe's view, a truly fully Christian life involves, but the opposition to his plan proves too much for him; unlike David Epp, he fails to act on his belief. He gives in to despair and dies, and the story ends on an ironic note with the triumph of the material values he abhorred. (pp. 59-60)

[In the last chapter] John puts forth a view of Christianity which radically challenges the basic assumptions of the conservative Mennonites—and of many other Christians as well. He insists that a wide social concern is of the essence of Christianity…. John is especially critical of the position taken by the Mennonite church, for he argues that Jesus didn't intend to achieve his revolution "by setting up a church that can never change no matter where on earth or in what century it is." He redefines what the real church should be: "No! The church Jesus began is us living, everywhere, a new society that sets all the old ideas of man living with other men on its head." The new society is built by our "thinking different" about everything.

In articulating this view of Christianity John is quite obviously a spokesman for Wiebe himself…. [As] Wiebe is largely using John to assert his own view, rather than fully dramatizing it, the novel comes close to being overtly didactic at this point…. In the final section, however, where John attempts to explain his views to Jakob Friesen, the professed unbeliever, Wiebe is more successful at dramatizing his religious beliefs. (pp. 61-2)

[The novel's] title comes from the appearance of the Greater Khingan Mountains of China which David Epp [saw] as he led his people out of Russia…. The blue mountains symbolize the hope of the Mennonites that somewhere they will find a place where they will be able to lead their lives and religion in total peace and freedom. But the blue is "mocking" because the goal is unattainable, and, in the eyes of John Reimer—and Rudy Wiebe—it is finally undesirable. The Mennonites' dream of isolating and insulating themselves from the world involves a failure of true Christian responsibility, which is shown by being involved in the world. (p. 62)