Turning his back on China
Jin made his second visit to Taiwan in January 2010 as a guest of the Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE).
Jin's first visit was back in late November of 2001. China Times Publishing had released his novel Waiting, a US National Book Award winner, in 2000, and published his short story collections Under the Red Flag and The Bridegroom thereafter.
When The Bridegroom came out, the National Cultural Association invited him to Taiwan. The timing was a little awkward: the US was still under the black cloud of the 9-11 attacks and Taiwan had just been ravaged by Typhoon Nari. Nonetheless, President Chen Shui-bian greeted him on his arrival and stated that Taiwan's politicians had to create "an unfettered writing environment" for authors of literature. In so doing, the president was commenting on the constraints mainland China placed on its artists' work and spiritual freedom, and on how this state of affairs was reflected in the fact that Ha Jin himself had been compelled to live abroad and write in English.
The title of a China Times interview with the author read: "He Chose to Turn His Back on His Native Land."
Jin's second visit to Taiwan came nine years later, when he accepted the TIBE's invitation to participate in a "Chinese Writers' Summit." The visit coincided with release of his most recent collection of short stories A Good Fall (China Times Publishing) and a collection of lectures entitled The Writer as Migrant (Linking Books). Jin held a book signing at the Eslite across from NTU on January 27 and delivered a lecture on "Sino-American Literature from the Standpoint of the Immigrant Experience" on the 28th.
Jin has had little opportunity to look around on his two visits to Taiwan, spending so much time doing interviews and meeting with high-ranking officials for food and conversation that he has had no time even to get over his jet lag. "Your premier is very eloquent," he says.
Jin is keenly aware of Taiwan's democratic freedoms, and of the island's special significance to him: because mainland China continues to ban all his published work except Waiting, Taiwan's translations of everything from Ocean of Words, In the Pond, The Crazed, and War Trash to A Free Life provide mainland residents with their only opportunity to read his books in Chinese. That's important to him because he wants mainlanders to "read and examine" his work.
Jin regrets that the hectic pace of his visits has left him without an opportunity to "see how ordinary [Taiwanese] live." His only glimpses have been a stroll down Wenzhou Street and through the NTU area in the company of Maudlin Yeh, deputy editor-in-chief at China Times Publishing. But his strongest impressions are of the enthusiasm of his Taiwanese readers. Jin isn't a best-selling author, but the people who come to his book signings have read all of his works and are all fans of realism in this age of fantasy. The autograph seekers have even included an elementary-school student who had read War Trash.
Reality is ugly and grim, but this doughty writer and his readers never turn away from it.
Unwilling to return to China after the Tian'anmen Massacre, Ha Jin chose to remain abroad. Though lonely, life abroad offered him the kind of autonomy and freedom to write the truth that creative individuals prize. The picture on the facing page shows his latest collection of short stories, A Good Fall.