The Bridegroom: Stories [Hardcover]

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!!

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.