Exploring China—in America
By ALEXANDRA ALTER
Books, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 27, 2009
The characters in Ha Jin's new story collection often speak in awkward, tinny phrases, saying things like "I felt as if a dozen awls were stabbing my heart" and "the little fox spirit really knows how to charm her man." Like the author, the characters in "A Good Fall," which is set among Chinese immigrants in Flushing, Queens, are exiled from their homeland but tethered to it by language.
Mr. Jin, author of 13 books, including the National Book Award-winning novel "Waiting," said he wanted the dialogue to sound slightly foreign. His characters' dislocated way of speaking also reflects Mr. Jin's roots and evolution as a writer. Mr. Jin, who once served in the People's Liberation Army, came to the U.S. in 1985 to do his doctoral work at Brandeis University and has not returned to mainland China in 24 years. He writes in English, but sets most of his stories in China or among Chinese-speakers, so he often draws on his native Mandarin for idioms and metaphors.
To keep up ties with Chinese speakers, he translates some of his books into Mandarin himself. Some of his books, which occasionally deal with political oppression in China, have been banned in his native country. His previous short story collection, "The Bridegroom," depicts the Chinese government as corrupt and authoritarian; "The Crazed" takes place during the tense buildup to Tiananmen Square. Mr. Jin originally planned to return to China after completing his dissertation, but he decided to stay in the U.S. following the government's crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protesters.
"I can't sever my ties with China completely," he said. "I feel too uncomfortable to live in China, but I can really keep the linguistic connection."
The 12 stories in "A Good Fall," range from a piece about a distressed monk's suicidal thoughts to a story about a composer's tender relationship with his girlfriend's parakeet. Many of the plots hinge on language barriers. In "Children as Enemies," a grandfather whose grandchildren want to Americanize their Chinese names becomes irate, and moves out of the house. In another story, a China-born professor at an American college panics over a mangled English phrase on his tenure application. In the title story, a young monk who hasn't been paid his salary by a Buddhist temple feels he can't sue or find other work because he doesn't speak English.
Mr. Jin says the story collection started taking shape in 2005, when he was invited to a conference in Queens held by a Chinese-language newspaper. He discovered a flourishing immigrant community in Flushing, and began visiting regularly to gather material for a short story collection. Mr. Jin, who lives in Foxborough, Mass., made 20 trips to the neighborhood, visiting food stalls, bath houses, super markets and tea shops. For one story, he spent a couple of nights in a boarding house for recent arrivals that charges $15 a night.
He also tried to absorb patterns of speech. Mr. Jin says he wanted to capture the way language evolves in diaspora, so he tweaked common Chinese expressions rather than translating them verbatim. A character whose sister back in China begs for money to buy a new car says lending her the money would be as futile as "hitting a dog with a meat ball—nothing would come back." Mr. Jin said he borrowed the image from a Chinese phrase, "hitting a dog with a pork bun," an expression that means it's useless to punish people by rewarding them. In another story, a home nursing aid describes her boss as "stout in the midriff and with a shiny bald spot like a lake in the mouth of an extinct volcano." In Chinese, a bald head is often described as "a lake in a forest," Mr. Jin said.
Dan Frank, Mr. Jin's editor at Pantheon, said he took care to preserve those effects. "I did not want to clean up his dialogue in a way that makes it sound natural," he said.
Mr. Jin also hopes to reach a Chinese-speaking diaspora audience. He recently translated "A Good Fall" into Mandarin for China Times, a Chinese-language publisher based in Taiwan.
Translating English prose into Chinese characters is labor intensive, but Mr. Jin says he prefers rendering it himself because he can take creative liberties, whereas translators tend to be more literal. To keep his Chinese from sounding decades out of date, Mr. Jin reads Chinese news on the Internet and contemporary work by young Chinese writers. His translations "still occasionally sound old-fashioned," he added.
"Some phrases that I used when I was young, I still use," Mr. Jin said.
Write to Alexandra Alter at alexandra.alter@wsj.com
By ALEXANDRA ALTER
Books, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 27, 2009
The characters in Ha Jin's new story collection often speak in awkward, tinny phrases, saying things like "I felt as if a dozen awls were stabbing my heart" and "the little fox spirit really knows how to charm her man." Like the author, the characters in "A Good Fall," which is set among Chinese immigrants in Flushing, Queens, are exiled from their homeland but tethered to it by language.
Mr. Jin, author of 13 books, including the National Book Award-winning novel "Waiting," said he wanted the dialogue to sound slightly foreign. His characters' dislocated way of speaking also reflects Mr. Jin's roots and evolution as a writer. Mr. Jin, who once served in the People's Liberation Army, came to the U.S. in 1985 to do his doctoral work at Brandeis University and has not returned to mainland China in 24 years. He writes in English, but sets most of his stories in China or among Chinese-speakers, so he often draws on his native Mandarin for idioms and metaphors.
To keep up ties with Chinese speakers, he translates some of his books into Mandarin himself. Some of his books, which occasionally deal with political oppression in China, have been banned in his native country. His previous short story collection, "The Bridegroom," depicts the Chinese government as corrupt and authoritarian; "The Crazed" takes place during the tense buildup to Tiananmen Square. Mr. Jin originally planned to return to China after completing his dissertation, but he decided to stay in the U.S. following the government's crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protesters.
"I can't sever my ties with China completely," he said. "I feel too uncomfortable to live in China, but I can really keep the linguistic connection."
The 12 stories in "A Good Fall," range from a piece about a distressed monk's suicidal thoughts to a story about a composer's tender relationship with his girlfriend's parakeet. Many of the plots hinge on language barriers. In "Children as Enemies," a grandfather whose grandchildren want to Americanize their Chinese names becomes irate, and moves out of the house. In another story, a China-born professor at an American college panics over a mangled English phrase on his tenure application. In the title story, a young monk who hasn't been paid his salary by a Buddhist temple feels he can't sue or find other work because he doesn't speak English.
Mr. Jin says the story collection started taking shape in 2005, when he was invited to a conference in Queens held by a Chinese-language newspaper. He discovered a flourishing immigrant community in Flushing, and began visiting regularly to gather material for a short story collection. Mr. Jin, who lives in Foxborough, Mass., made 20 trips to the neighborhood, visiting food stalls, bath houses, super markets and tea shops. For one story, he spent a couple of nights in a boarding house for recent arrivals that charges $15 a night.
He also tried to absorb patterns of speech. Mr. Jin says he wanted to capture the way language evolves in diaspora, so he tweaked common Chinese expressions rather than translating them verbatim. A character whose sister back in China begs for money to buy a new car says lending her the money would be as futile as "hitting a dog with a meat ball—nothing would come back." Mr. Jin said he borrowed the image from a Chinese phrase, "hitting a dog with a pork bun," an expression that means it's useless to punish people by rewarding them. In another story, a home nursing aid describes her boss as "stout in the midriff and with a shiny bald spot like a lake in the mouth of an extinct volcano." In Chinese, a bald head is often described as "a lake in a forest," Mr. Jin said.
Dan Frank, Mr. Jin's editor at Pantheon, said he took care to preserve those effects. "I did not want to clean up his dialogue in a way that makes it sound natural," he said.
Mr. Jin also hopes to reach a Chinese-speaking diaspora audience. He recently translated "A Good Fall" into Mandarin for China Times, a Chinese-language publisher based in Taiwan.
Translating English prose into Chinese characters is labor intensive, but Mr. Jin says he prefers rendering it himself because he can take creative liberties, whereas translators tend to be more literal. To keep his Chinese from sounding decades out of date, Mr. Jin reads Chinese news on the Internet and contemporary work by young Chinese writers. His translations "still occasionally sound old-fashioned," he added.
"Some phrases that I used when I was young, I still use," Mr. Jin said.
Write to Alexandra Alter at alexandra.alter@wsj.com
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