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Summary: Fascinating look at China today
Review: Ha Jin is one of the best writers in America today. His stories focus on modern-day China---highlighting daily life and the every-day difficulties for people living under Chinese communism.
I am not a huge fan of short stories but Jin does an incredible job of creating characters whom you come to care about very quickly. In just a few lines, you get to know each character and see the world through his or her eyes. The best story in this one is "Saboteur." Buy the book for this story if for no other reason! "Saboteur" deals with the tyranny of petty bureaucrats and the ways in which ordinary people can and do strike back. The end provides one of the most incredible twists I've ever read.
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Summary: Writing Short Superb!!
Review: Ha Jin's collection of short stories may be set in China, but they easily mirror ancient perks of authority in the common culture. Read one---you are sure to finish the book. Set against the backdrops of capitalism and communism, each story serves up a unique host of characters. The common thread through many of these stories appears to be incarceration, interrogation and showing "a sincere attitude." His stories feature the rude and powerfully poor versus the responsible-poor and the poor. Ha Jin's writing puts the reader right there, through pared-prose the characters are visible. They move through the language without pause, without stumble, free of over-weighted consideration. Saboteur begins with a young couple lunching, nothing out of the ordinary: the wife complains of a headache, the husband suggests aspirin. Instantly, persecution of a would-be citizen-serving policeman launches the husband into unsolicited chaos. The husband is then charged for not being a "model for the masses." From this point, fate for Mr. Chiu seems to be just what it is: a word. In Alive, Mr. Guhan is under contest for his job as head foreman. He is married and poor. A violent earthquake and loss of memory sends Guhan into not so much as a new life, than it is another one, in Taifu. This story is strangely curious in the beginning. Don't expect much relief by the end. Ha Jin is not so generous. A Tiger-Fighter is Hard to Find is insanely hilarious. It is a subtle tale of Huping, the average wanna-be-hero who takes complete and sole advantage of his opponents' impediments: a tranquilized Siberian tiger, subsequently, a fearful co-worker. All to capture a scene for a film. More than sincere filmmaking, however, is Huping's honest determination to be a true tiger-fighter. He even has jumping dreams about it--dreams so intruding, they cause enough limb-jolt to bruise his wife. The ache is, you pound a living anything one too many times, it's bound to strike back. Imagine Huping, enclasped in a tree. Feeling defeated, and perhaps cornered, Huping's demand is to, "shoot him!" His character is grounded in hubris and the primest of sentimentality. This is a story not to be missed. Broken showcases Tingting a typist, an adulteress, incarcerated. The focus of Tingting's interrogation often treads into the vein of personal sport or later use. Manjin, a participant in Tingting's interrogation and former spy on her sexual rendezvous, finds himself in a similar situation. In the crevices of a theater, he encounters a female who, without words, sends him on a hunt. He too becomes imprisoned and made to explain his craze. Perhaps the supreme stories are Bridegroom and The Woman from New York. Beautifully told, Bridegroom gets to the core of ignorance when it comes to homosexuality. Baowen, an exquisitely described homosexual, marries young Beina--it's economically convenient, as well as save-face. Beina's choices are less than sparse. The reality about Baowen's sexual preference comes to the table; he is then subjected to various speculations and cures--including electrical shock, "That's why we give him the bath. Other patients get electric cuffs around their limbs or electric rods on their bodies. Some of them scream like animals every time. We have to tie them up." What follows is a question jammed in the irony of curiosity and pity for Beina's father who asks, "When will he be cured?" Bridegroom is a brilliant portrayal of denial and a splendid social commentary on the pressures of conventional marriage in all cultures. In The Woman From New York, Jinli spends the past few years in America then returns home to her husband and daughter. An attempt to lure her husband back to America, with American toys, "a brand-new Ford", the privilege of driving, homeland of Harvard University, fails as Chigan holds fast not to follow. "No. Even if you give me a gold mountain, I won't go." Perhaps the height of Jinli's bewilderment is the fact that her daughter refuses to speak to her and denies Jinli as her mother. This story is a beautiful depiction of unfavored consequences when mothers leave their children. On native turf, Jinli becomes the foreigner. Could she be read as a "tragic" figure...? I'm not so sure, sympathy is the last thought for her character. At least for this first read. The receding approach informs the robust and spiritual depth of these characters so their experiences are like seeds. Ha Jin leaves space to see the importance of them, not congest them with the fancy of language that might have otherwise derail their literary cargo. Both hands up!!--Bridegroom is very recommended!!
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Summary: Modern tales of Norhtern China come alive.
Review: I am a westerner who has traveled and worked (and married) in this region of China. The books of Ha Jin make me believe that I am in Dalian or Harbin. The characters have such an intresting nature but as I have found there isn't one China there is 1.5 billion China's. Ha Jin characters have a chinese nature and a personal independence I like. These tales are multifaceted and no repetitious. The setting and the characters change from story to story, but all are in this beautiful complex world of northern China. This region of China is still the least settled and the most political corruption and non western thinking happens here. The stories I liked most are:
the Sabatour which is about a professor who is arrested for standing up to the police and who is utterly defeated, but is looking for an unlikely form of revenge. The Woman from New York. About a chinese woman who has gone to the west and comes back to reestablish connection with her family only to find she doesn't fit. Cowboy Chicken comes to China
A story about Chinese workers in an American francies trying to make sense of a formulated system that suprisingly works but doesnt fit China. This tale is mircaulous in how the west and east often miss the essence of each other. The Kindergarten
A tale where a young class of students is cheated by there teacher to do work so that the down trodden teacher can survive. It is a tale of maturity and vengeance and misunderstanding. The story is from a young girls eye who understands something is wrong but not understanding the causes.
Ha Jin's novels Waiting and In the Pond are good reads as well
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Summary: I Liked the Stories, Not Sure About the Prose
Review: Most people are familiar with Ha Jin because of his lovely novel, WAITING (I preferred THE CRAZED) but Ha Jin writes delightful short stories as well. Like WAITING AND THE CRAZED, the twelve stories in THE BRIDEGROOM are set in Muji City, China. Two of my favorites were the first story, "Saboteur" and the last one, "When Cowboy Chicken Came to Town." The last story, in particular, is told with much wry humor and shows just how far provincial China is from the capitalist west, not only geographically, but politically as well. People, though, are people the world over and Ha Jin writes, not about events as much as he does people and their reactions to outside pressures. I think the richest, most complex story in the collection is the title story, "The Bridegroom." It's a story that's filled with the reactions of one person to the actions and revelations of another. Part of the reason I like Ha Jin's writing so much is because he writes about Chinese people living in China, people who know little or nothing about what it's like to be western (this gives rise to much black humor in some of the stories, e.g., "When Cowboy Chicken Came to Town"). Ha Jin, although living in the US now, writes in English, though from a totally eastern (Chinese) perspective which give his stories a very "different" quality. I like that aspect of his stories. I think a large part of Ha Jin's charm lies in opening a "closed" world to westerners and giving us a look inside. There has been much talk about Ha Jin's "spare" prose. Yes, it is pared down to the very basic. Sometimes I like this aspect of Ha Jin's stories and sometimes I don't. I think the spare prose "fits" the stories well but I think Ha Jin's characterizations sometimes suffer because of it. His characters can seem too innocent and too naive. They can lack depth and sometimes I lose sympathy for them because of this. English is a rich and complex language and I don't feel Ha Jin takes full advantage of this fact. I'd love to read a story he's written in Chinese that's been translated so I could compare. Despite a few misgivings, the stories contained in THE BRIDEGROOM are lovely and well worth anyone's time.
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