Under the Red Flag: Stories

As a Chinese, it's always interesting for me to read those Chinese stories written in English. It's like to look at yourself in a mirror through multiple reflections. Usually, you will feel the image distorted a little but still yourself. How well the image represents you depends on the quality of the mirror. Definitely, Ha Jin is a good mirror. It's mostly due to he's an original Chinese too and understands this culture deeply well from its root. While reading the short stories, I couldn't help assuming that he must wrote them in Chinese first then translate into English. At least wrote in Chinese in his mind before he could write down in English. Many Chinese traditional slang and proverbs were translated in a way which maybe not very show more accurate but quite interesting and affluence in philosophy, which in turn, in my opinion, enriched the English language. Another thing which I really like about this book is his style of telling stories. No matter the story itself was happy or sad (maybe happy is not appropriate to be used for those stories. Here it's just to show the opposite of sad), there are always a bit senses of dark humor here and there in the book. Yes, sometimes life is absurd and laughable. Individuals are too trivial and insignificant against a time. We look back that particular time and consume their life stories. However, who knows they maybe just the distorted images of ourselves in current world. When we laughed at their fates/stories, who knows we're not laughing out our own life? show less

I've always found Ha Jin's writing to be very refreshing and unique. It sounds as though his books are translated from Chinese, but I'm not sure. As a Chinese (who doesn't speak or write much Chinese) from Malaysia, his books speak of a place and time of a heritage I know little of, but long to understand more of. At times disturbing, at times heart-warming, Ha Jin's writing is easy to read, his stories simple yet poignant and serve as a small window into a China few people know about.

Some of the stories were a bit disturbing, but all were well-written and thought provoking.

This collection of short stories presents a social landscape in a fictive Chinese village under the Cultural Revolution. Another great book by Ha Jin. Weird and grotesque, as usual.

《光天化日：鄉村的故事》