A Major Literary Force Early in His Career

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	• The Bridegroom: Stories Ha Jin Vintage, 2001 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 26 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Upheaval

Ha Jin's hilarious scenes paint mainland China in serious upheaval, its battles with its political (the Cultural Revolution) and social (arranged marriages) past, its bureaucratic present and its capitalist and freer (on a personal level) future.

In 'The Woman from New York', the influence of the parents (-in-law) in divorce matters and of the party bureaucrats for job assignments is still insurmountable.

In 'An Entrepreneur's Story', an ambitious mother shouts that 'she rather throws her daughter into a sewer than let her marry me.' Another one 'called him 'hooligan' when he was a butcher', but when he became rich ... The story also shows the power shift from party bureaucracy to money.

In 'Saboteur', those who monopolize political power can still impose their gratuitous arrogance.

In 'A bad Joke', the political leaders are still untouchable.

In 'Flame', a lucky girl is one who married 'an officer with infinite access to food supply', but the marriage is unhappy because arranged.

In 'Alive', the struggle for good housing and the importance of job assignments play a crucial and bitter role in family relations.

In 'A Tiger-fighter is hard to find', the competition between provinces for the favors of Beijing is hilarious.

In 'An official Reply', a party member uses his privileged position to obtain sexual favors and tickets for foreign trips.

'Broken' shows the prude Party's obsession with 'illegal sex'.

In 'The Bridegroom/, the longtime suppressed and oppressed gay scene comes to the surface.

'After Cowboy Chicken came to Town' shows the Americanization of China at work: hire and fire, huge salary differences and a hypocritical 'client first' policy.

Another constant is the sometimes substandard product quality (condoms and food - 'In the Kindergarten').

These short stories are all brilliantly shining pearls of human psychology, telling, ultimately, still survival struggles.
Not to be missed.

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Please do not eat the soup

After I read Ocean of Words, I ran out to buy the Bridegroom. In Ocean of Words, it seemed that Ha Jin created likeable characters forced into a restrictive society. In the Bridegroom, Ha Jin created some characters with a bit more of an evil streak. I will never eat soup from a stand again. This is not necessarily a bad thing; rather it just makes some of the reading uncomfortable. Still, better than most.

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A Major Literary Force Early in His Career

These stories were written before Ha Jin's larger works. I've read "The Crazed" and thought it was a masterpiece. There's no question these stories are not as even as Ha Jin's longer works, but they certainly are worth reading and give an excellent peek into attitudes and social mores of China today. The collision of the West with China is very interesting and the result is somewhat unexpected. I'm surprised how far the West has made inroads into China. I agree that the Cowboy Chicken story is one of the best here. Ha Jin is a major literary force and as such, all his output is worthy of our attention.

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Some excellent, all competent

If you want to read some clever tales about daily life in China because the place seems too dense to tease out the individual stories, then you will probably like this collection of short stories, written by an author who grew up there, and who now writes in English. Taking as his models such writers from Checkov to the post-modernists, he does a good job of taking the masters and filtering through a cultural and personal imagination that few Westerners are privy to. My favorite is "In the Kindergarten," a truly masterful piece of writing--unpretentious and astoundingly complex if you analyze it thoroughly. The others are a bit gimmicky--epistolary stories, oddball characters and set-ups, for example, a tale of a low budget film company trying to edit a socialist/heroic film by matching shots of a hero fighting a real tiger, which, after it dies, is replaced by a man in a tiger suit. What Ha Jin seems to have done for China is similar in some respects to what post WW II Italian filmmakers did with cineam: open up a world that is hidden to many of us despite the purpoted "global village."

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A Resemblance Of Various Emotions

When I read this book I never put down the book before finishing a chapter (which usually happened to be chapterS). It's a real dazzling novel that made me crying, smiling, wondering and holding my breath until the end of the story. Trust me, when you read this novel you'll find all of your emotions emerge to the surface.

Though I was kinda dissappointed with the ending, which for me looks like Ha Jin wanted to finish the novel ASAP that he missed to include a strong ending like he did in WAITING, but overall the novel is a great book to read and is still pleasant to read all over again.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

From the remarkable Ha Jin, winner of the National Book Award for his celebrated novel Waiting, a collection of comical and deeply moving tales of contemporary China that are as warm and human as they are surprising, disturbing, and delightful.

In the title story, the head of security at a factory is shocked, first when the hansomest worker on the floor proposes marriage to his homely adopted daughter, and again when his new son-in-law is arrested for the "crime" of homosexuality. In "After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town," the workers at an American-style fast food franchise receive a hilarious crash course in marketing, deep frying, and that frustrating capitalist dictum, "the customer is always right."Ha Jin has triumphed again with his unforgettable storytelling in The Bridegroom.

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