May-ying sent from Canada, as well as her own son
who suffers from a physical deformity, Huangbo
witnesses the destruction of her beautiful West-
ern-style home, built by the creativity and design
of her husband, and by May-ying, who has sent
her wages to China to finance its construction.
Denise Chong’s mother, Hing, is May-ying’s
youngest daughter and one that was born and
remained within the borders of Canada. Only
having known of her sisters in a single picture of
them, Hing leads a life of poverty and loneliness
in the Chinatowns of western Canada. At various
times throughout her childhood, Hing acts as a
nursemaid to her mother. In 2004 The Concubine’s
Children was adapted into a stage play, directed
by David Mann and produced by Nanaimo’s The-
atreOne and the Port Theatre, for a total of four
performances.
While the story itself is concentrated in two
separate countries, it deals with the sense of fa-
milial relations and the transcontinental develop-
ment of Chinatowns in Canada. It also chronicles
the growth of women with respect to their place in
the family and community. In particular, Chong
depicts the manner in which mother-daughter
relationships grew intimate, especially as children
helped their mothers cope with the hardships and
challenges of living in a new society by acting as
their eyes and ears.
Anne Marie FowlerCrazed, The Ha Jin (2002)
Set largely at the fictitious Shanning University,
against the backdrop of the Tiananmen Square
uprising of 1989, this novel is a searing exploration
of political and intellectual life in post–Cultural
Revolution China. Its main protagonist is Jian
Wang, a promising graduate student in literature.
Because of his intellectual acuity and integrity, Jian
has gained the support and friendship of Professor
Shenmin Yang, who is not only one of the univer-
sity’s most respected academics but also the father
of Jian’s fiancée, Meimei, a medical student study-
ing for her exams at a university in Beijing.
The action starts when Professor Yang suffers
a stroke and Jian is assigned to become one of his
nurses. Although he is in the midst of preparing for
the doctoral entrance exams to Beijing University
so he can join Meimei in the capital, Jian willingly
accepts the assignment because of his admiration
for his mentor. But while Yang is supposed to have
had a “cerebral thrombosis,” he remains extremely
articulate. In fact, he cannot seem to stop talking
about the most sensitive of subjects. As he attends
to his teacher, Jian learns much about Yang’s life.
Either through hallucination, or deliberately, Yang
reveals that he was condemned as a “demon-mon-
ster” during the Cultural Revolution and sent to a
labor camp for several years. More recently, he has
had an affair with a female student, one of Jian’s
colleagues and closest friends. Because of the af-
fair, he is now being blackmailed by the Commu-
nist Party’s secretary on campus, who resents the
fact Yang refused to help the secretary’s nephew
get admission to a Canadian university. Even more
significant, after a life dedicated to scholarship,
Yang has begun questioning the value of intel-
lectual life—at least in China. Consequently, Jian
decides not to take his doctoral entrance exams.
After Yang dies and Meimei leaves him for the son
of a prominent party functionary, he travels to
Beijing with other students to attend the protests
at Tiananmen Square. Deemed a counterrevolu-
tionary, and wanted by the police, he is forced to
leave the country.
Like HA JIN’s other works, The Crazed thor-
oughly examines the material conditions in the so-
ciety it depicts. For instance, housing is so limited
that even academics feel compelled to choose their
mates based on the sort of apartment they have.
The novel’s primary focus, though, is on people’s
intellectual or spiritual lives. In his nightly ram-
blings, the secular Professor Yang declares loudly
that no one can destroy his soul. This is also what
he keeps reminding Jian, not to allow anyone to
quash his spirit. Furthermore, Yang confides that
the only reason he was able to remain sane during
his incarceration was because of the inspiration he
derived from books, notably Dante’s Divine Com-
edy. Another book that plays a critical role in theCrazed, The 55