Review: 'Bridegroom' a subtle, seductive collection of stories from Ha Jin

"The Bridegroom"
By Ha Jin
Pantheon
Short stories
225 pages

By Robert Beveridge
Special to CNN Interactive

(CNN) -- As I sat down to dinner recently, I felt somewhat guilty. It's all Ha Jin's fault, and he should be proud.

Ha Jin's new collection of stories, "The Bridegroom," takes us back to Muji City, the same (fictional?) landscape he explored in his National Book Award-winning novel "Waiting." Muji City is the quintessential literary setting. It gives the reader an anchor, allowing him to focus on the characters and action with as little distraction as possible.

Ha Jin helps with this by allowing his language to seduce the reader into each story while at the same time staying as unobtrusive as possible. This is noticeable in the opening scene of the very first story, "Saboteur," after the newly married couple sit down at an outdoor market with their lunches, the quintesssential picture of normality:

	EXCERPT
Excerpt: 'The Bridegroom'

"To his right, at another table, two railroad policemen were drinking tea and laughing; it seemed that the stout, middle-aged man was telling a joke to his young comrade, who was tall and of athletic build. Now and again they would steal a glance at Mr. Chiu's table.

"The air smelled of rotten melon. A few flies kept buzzing above the couple's lunch. Hundreds of people were rushing around to get on the platform or to catch buses to downtown. ..."

An effortless injection of discord into a bucolic, almost pastoral, scene. This ease of diction carries throughout the stories in the book, lending the disparate characters in them one of their common bonds.

Another of those bonds, in most cases, is a comparison of Chinese and American culture. Sometimes it's quite intentional and is at the forefront of the story ("The Woman from New York," "After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town"). More often it's a subtext, sometimes just a ripple in the story's fabric ("Saboteur," "In the Kindergarten").

From the perspective of the American reader, this is perhaps what makes Ha Jin's writing so compelling, aside from its obvious technical merit. We're given a look into another culture from the perspective of a writer who's lived both lives, but has enough command of his characters to remember, and to make us aware, that they have not.

Ha Jin is able to make use of sayings and images that would be unforgivable cliches when dealing with American subjects and gets away with it; when one of his characters observes, for example, "What disappointment her words gave those credulous young ones, who believed Wall Street was paved with gold bricks" ("The Woman from New York"), instead of dismissing, we can sympathize.

More intriguing, however, are the less cliched comparisons made by the characters. We've all heard that those from rural areas overseas are under the impression that American streets are paved with gold. But many different characters in many different stories in this collection yearn to go to America, where "you can eat meat and fish every day," and dairy products are in abundance.

Sitting down to a pork stew and a glass of milk fifteen minutes after closing the cover on this one was a rather sobering experience. Engaging, thought-provoking, and always intelligent, Ha Jin has given us another prizeworthy book in "The Bridegroom."

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November 18, 1999

Ha Jin page
Emory Magazine: Ha Jin

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