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Waiting: A Novel by Ha Jin |
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Subjects |
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CHINA_FICTION MAN-WOMAN RELATIONSHIPS_FICTION PHYSICIANS_FICTION FICTION_GENERAL | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Description/Notes |
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For more than seventeen years, Lin Kong has lived in two Chinas: One is the modern China of the army hospital where he is a devoted & ambitious doctor in love with a modern young woman-a nurse who is educated, clever, & vivid. The other is the ancient China of the farming village where lives the wife to whom his family married him when they were very young-the tiny woman, humble & touchingly loyal whom he visits in order to ask, again & again, for a divorce. Over the years, the passionate love that governs Lin King is stretched ever more taut in the puritanical & suspicion-ridden society where an adultery discovered by the Party can ruin lives forever. Every summer Lin's compliant wife agrees to a divorce, but then backs out. This time, Lin promises, will be different. Lin Kong graduated from the military medical school toward the end of 1963 and came to Muji to work as a doctor. At that time the hospital ran a small nursing school, which offered a sixteen-month program and produced nurses for the army in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. When Manna Wu enrolled as a student in the fall of 1964, Lin was teaching a course in anatomy. She was an energetic young woman at the time, playing volleyball on the hospital team. Unlike most of her classmates who were recent middle- or high-school graduates, she had already served three years as a telephone operator in a coastal division and was older than most of them. Since over 95 percent of the students in the nursing school were female, many young officers from the units stationed in Muji City would frequent the hospital on weekends. Most of the officers wanted to find a girlfriend or a fianc?e among the students, although these young women were still soldiers and were not allowed to have a boyfriend. There was a secret reason for the men's interest in the female students, a reason few of them would articulate but one which they all knew in their hearts, namely that these were 'good girls.' That phrase meant these women were virgins; otherwise they could not have joined the army, since every young woman recruited had to go through a physical exam that eliminated those with a broken hymen. One Sunday afternoon in the summer, Manna was washing clothes alone in the dormitory washroom. In came a bareheaded lieutenant of slender build and medium height, his face marked with a few freckles. His collar was unbuckled and the top buttons on his jacket were undone, displaying his prominent Adam's apple. He stood beside her, lifted his foot up, and placed it into the long terrazzo sink. The tap water splashed on his black plastic sandal and spread like a silvery fan. Done with the left foot, he put in his right. To Manna's amusement, he bathed his feet again and again. His breath stank of alcohol. He turned and gave her a toothy grin, and she smiled back. Gradually they entered into conversation. He said he was the head of a radio station at the headquarters of the Muji Sub-Command and a friend of Instructor Peng. His hands shook a little as he talked. He asked where she came from; she told him her hometown was in Shandong Province, withholding the fact that she had grown up as an orphan without a hometown -- her parents had died in a traffic accident in Tibet when she was three. 'What's your name?' he asked. 'Manna Wu.' 'I'm Mai Dong, from Shanghai.' A lull set in. She felt her face flushing a little, so she returned to washing her clothes. But he seemed eager to go on talking. 'Glad to meet you, Comrade Manna Wu,' he said abruptly and stretched out his hand. She waved to show the soapsuds on her palms. 'Sorry,' she said with a pixieish smile. 'By the way, how do you like Muji?' he asked, rubbing his wet hands on his flanks. 'It's all right.' 'Really? Even the weather here?' 'Yes.' 'Not too cold in winter?' Before she could answer, he went on, 'Of course, summer's fine. How about -- ' 'Why did you bathe your feet eight or nine times?' She giggled. 'Oh, did I?' He seemed bewildered, looking down at his feet. 'Nice sandals,' she said. 'My cousin sent them from Shanghai. By the way, how old are you?' He grinned. Surprised by the question, she looked at him for a moment and then turned away, reddening. He smiled rather naturally. 'I mean, do you have a boyfriend?' Again she was taken aback. Before she could decide how to answer, a woman student walked in with a bucket to fetch water, so their conversation had to end. A week later she receiv Winner of the 1999 National Book Award for Fiction! In Waiting, PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author Ha Jin draws on his intimate knowledge of contemporary China to create a novel of unexpected richness and feeling. This is the story of Lin Kong, a man living in two worlds, struggling with the conflicting claims of two utterly different women as he moves through the political minefields of a society designed to regulate his every move and stifle the promptings of his innermost heart. For more than seventeen years, this devoted and ambitious doctor has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young--a humble and touchingly loyal woman, whom he visits in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce. In a culture in which the ancient ties of tradition and family still hold sway and where adultery discovered by the Party can ruin lives forever, Lin's passionate love is stretched ever more taut by the passing years. Every summer, his compliant wife agrees to a divorce but then backs out. This time, Lin promises, will be different. Tracing these lives through their summer of decision and beyond, Ha Jin vividly conjures the texture of daily life in a place where the demands of human longing must contend with the weight of centuries of custom. Waiting charms and startles us??with its depiction of a China that remains hidden to Western eyes even as it moves us with its piercing vision of the universal complications of love. 'Compassionate, earthy, robust, and wise, Waiting blends provocative allegory with all-too-human comedy. The result touches and reveals, bringing to life a singular world in its spectacular intricacy.'???????? -- Gish Jen, author of Who's Irish? 'A remarkable love story. Ha Jin's understanding of the human heart and the human condition transcends borders and time. Waiting is an outstanding literary achievement.'?? -- Lisa See, author of On Gold Mountain 'A deceptively simple tale, written with extraordinary precision and grace. Ha Jin has established himself as one of the great sturdy realists still writing in a postmodern age.'???????? -- Kirkus Reviews |
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