Waiting
by Ha Jin
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Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award • National Book Award Winner • Pulitzer Prize Finalist • A New York Times Notable BookFrom the widely acclaimed author—a rich and atmospheric novel about a man living in two worlds, struggling with the conflicting claims of two utterly different women.
The demands of human longing contend with the weight of centuries of custom in acclaimed author Ha Jin’s Waiting, a novel of unexpected richness and universal resonance. Every summer Lin Kong, show more a doctor in the Chinese Army, returns to his village to end his loveless arranged marriage with the humble and touchingly loyal Shuyu. But each time Lin must return to the city to tell Manna Wu, the educated, modern nurse he loves, that they will have to postpone their engagement once again. Caught between the conflicting claims of these two utterly different women and trapped by a culture in which adultery can ruin lives and careers, Lin has been waiting for eighteen years. This year, he promises will be different.
"Ha Jin profoundly understands the conflict between the individual and society, between the timeless universality of the human heart and constantly shifting politics of the moment. With wisdom, restraint, and empathy for all his characters, he vividly reveals the complexities and subtleties of a world and a people we desperately need to know."—Judges' Citation, National Book Award. show less
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Initially, I was not very engaged by Ha Jin's WAITING (1999), which won the National Book Award, but the deeper I got into it, the more compelling it became. A simple tale, set in the China of Mao's cultural revolution, the protagonist, Lin Kong, is a college educated medical doctor in the Army, trapped in an unhappy marriage that was arranged to have someone to look after his aged parents. He is posted at an urban military hospital, far from his home village where his wife, daughter and parents live, and only gets back there once a year for ten days. He falls in love with Manna, a nurse at his base, but they comply faithfully with all the rigid regulations that forbid any and all relationships outside of marriage. So every summer for show more the next eighteen years he goes home and takes his wife to the nearest courthouse and requests a divorce. It is never granted. Finally, after eighteen years of being separated, the divorce is granted and Lin and Manna are married. That's a lot of waiting. Lin is portrayed, however, as a kind, honorable and very patient man, mild-mannered, bookish and not particularly passionate. His new wife, who has changed and grown old waiting, is quite the opposite, nearly wearing Lin out in bed in the early days, weeks and months of their marriage. There's a lot more to the story, obviously, but to go into more detail might spoil the story for potential readers, so I won't. I learned much about commissars and political officers and the regimentation of life in Mao's China of the sixties and seventies but there wasn't so much of it that it became tedious or slowed the narrative.
WAITING is the second Ha Jin novel I've read. The other was WAR TRASH, which I did not enjoy nearly as much as this one. I'm twenty-five years late to the party, but this is a damn good book. Great characters and a compelling story that soon draws you in. Very highly recommended.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less
WAITING is the second Ha Jin novel I've read. The other was WAR TRASH, which I did not enjoy nearly as much as this one. I'm twenty-five years late to the party, but this is a damn good book. Great characters and a compelling story that soon draws you in. Very highly recommended.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less
A Chinese novel written in English by a man who decided to stay in the West after the Tiananmen Square events of 1989. Which does not make either the novel or the author less Chinese - but it makes the novel a bit more accessible than translated novels.
My library initially shelved this into its romance section but then re-shelved under General Fiction (and never covered the old label fully so it is still vaguely visible). And I am not surprised. On the surface it looks like a romance novel. In a way it is a romance novel - in the same way Anna Karenina is a romance novel for example.
Lin Kong is trying to find a way to be with the woman he loves. He is an army doctor, living in the city but married to a woman in a distant village who show more he sees once a year. He never chose his bride, Shuyu - his parents arranged his marriage and he meekly accepted. He even managed to produce a daughter with her - and while she took care of his dying parents one after the other, he built his life in the city. Shuyu is old-fashioned even for the village - she has bound feet (which she is the wrong generation for - her mother's generation was supposed to be the last one to suffer with that but she was not spared, she is uneducated and unsophisticated - the wrong woman for Lin Kong in all possible ways.
And there is Manna Wu, a nurse in the same hospital, Lin Kong's sweetheart who he cannot even hold hands with or go on a walk with outside of the hospital compound because of the rules that everyone lives with. China of the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s is not exactly known for allowing a lot of freedom.
So when the novel opens, Lin Kong and Shuyu are in front of a judge, after 17 years of separation, in 1983, asking for a divorce. Until Shuyu changes her mind again and the judge denies the request again. That had been happening over and over for more than a decade and Lin Kong is getting disheartened. But that's not really where the story must start - because after this interlude, we go back to 1963 to see Lin Kong becoming a doctor and falling in love and then living through all the years until we can catch up with them in 1983.
And as much as it is the story of Manna Wu and Lin Kong, it is also the a glimpse into the history of China and the relationships in it in this era - restricted, monitored, always on the verge of becoming a disaster. And the two women represent the old and the new, the traditional and the modern and in places become more symbols than actual human beings. But underneath that they are people, with feelings and regrets and the symbolic person and the real one merge into a single entity. People are people - it does not matter what ideology you believe in, love is always going to be there. But at the same time the novel is also an exploration of what happens to love when it needs to wait and what happens when people try to hang to dreams from decades ago.
In a way the novel has a happy ending but not in the way one would expect. It makes one wonder what is worth fighting for and if dreams are worth getting realized at the end. In that triangle, the weakest link is always Lin Kong - his indecisiveness ends up costing decades of the lives of both women connected to him and at the end he is the one who gets to complain. There is a lot to be said about the female characters here and the place of women in the society - the "we are all the same" of communism was always a nice slogan but never really worked like that.
I ended up liking this novel a lot. It has a melancholy feeling that works in a way I did not expect it to work - underneath the seemingly easy novel sits a meditation on love and choices, on dreams coming true too late and on human nature. show less
My library initially shelved this into its romance section but then re-shelved under General Fiction (and never covered the old label fully so it is still vaguely visible). And I am not surprised. On the surface it looks like a romance novel. In a way it is a romance novel - in the same way Anna Karenina is a romance novel for example.
Lin Kong is trying to find a way to be with the woman he loves. He is an army doctor, living in the city but married to a woman in a distant village who show more he sees once a year. He never chose his bride, Shuyu - his parents arranged his marriage and he meekly accepted. He even managed to produce a daughter with her - and while she took care of his dying parents one after the other, he built his life in the city. Shuyu is old-fashioned even for the village - she has bound feet (which she is the wrong generation for - her mother's generation was supposed to be the last one to suffer with that but she was not spared, she is uneducated and unsophisticated - the wrong woman for Lin Kong in all possible ways.
And there is Manna Wu, a nurse in the same hospital, Lin Kong's sweetheart who he cannot even hold hands with or go on a walk with outside of the hospital compound because of the rules that everyone lives with. China of the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s is not exactly known for allowing a lot of freedom.
So when the novel opens, Lin Kong and Shuyu are in front of a judge, after 17 years of separation, in 1983, asking for a divorce. Until Shuyu changes her mind again and the judge denies the request again. That had been happening over and over for more than a decade and Lin Kong is getting disheartened. But that's not really where the story must start - because after this interlude, we go back to 1963 to see Lin Kong becoming a doctor and falling in love and then living through all the years until we can catch up with them in 1983.
And as much as it is the story of Manna Wu and Lin Kong, it is also the a glimpse into the history of China and the relationships in it in this era - restricted, monitored, always on the verge of becoming a disaster. And the two women represent the old and the new, the traditional and the modern and in places become more symbols than actual human beings. But underneath that they are people, with feelings and regrets and the symbolic person and the real one merge into a single entity. People are people - it does not matter what ideology you believe in, love is always going to be there. But at the same time the novel is also an exploration of what happens to love when it needs to wait and what happens when people try to hang to dreams from decades ago.
In a way the novel has a happy ending but not in the way one would expect. It makes one wonder what is worth fighting for and if dreams are worth getting realized at the end. In that triangle, the weakest link is always Lin Kong - his indecisiveness ends up costing decades of the lives of both women connected to him and at the end he is the one who gets to complain. There is a lot to be said about the female characters here and the place of women in the society - the "we are all the same" of communism was always a nice slogan but never really worked like that.
I ended up liking this novel a lot. It has a melancholy feeling that works in a way I did not expect it to work - underneath the seemingly easy novel sits a meditation on love and choices, on dreams coming true too late and on human nature. show less
Is love a habit, a duty, a passion? How do you know when you are in love? These are difficult questions to answer if you live in a society like Maoist China, where the topic is never discussed.
Lin Kong married Shuyu in 1963. It was a marriage arranged by his parents. Lin worked as a physician at an army hospital in Muji City. Shuyu stayed back in their village and looked after Lin's parents until their deaths and then tended their farm. Although Shuyu was a model wife by village standards, Lin had been reluctant to bring her to the city, embarrassed by her bound feet, to him a symbol of what he perceived as her overall backwardness.
In Muji, Lin met Manna Wu, a nurse. Hospital rules forbade men and women to meet outside the compound. show more Despite this stricture, the two were drawn together and gradually their interaction at work led others to identify them as a couple, despite the platonic nature of their relationship.
Each year on his twelve day holiday, Lin would return to his village and seek a divorce from Shuyu. Each year she would agree, but once in front of a judge, she would say no. Each year Manna Wu grew older and more frustrated by her situation, while Lin felt more guilty for letting her wait for his divorce, rather than getting on with her life. He tried to arrange other marriages for her, but nothing came of it.
The work unit had a rule that a divorce could be granted without the other partner's consent after eighteen years of separation. In the eighteenth year, Lin returned to his village with high hopes.
[Waiting] is a far bleaker novel than [In the Pond]. The twenty odd years of Chinese history it spans provide a background and context to the story.
This may sound farfetched, but it is entirely plausible. It refers not only to a time of fuel and parts shortages, but also to an extremely tense period along the Sino-Soviet border.
Books by foreign authors, either in translation or in the original language were highly problematic. In an unguarded moment in 1972, a commissar explains to Manna Wu how he came across his translation of [Leaves of Grass]:
He goes on to explain that this translation has been out of print since the early fifties. This was not a book you would want to be found with during the Cultural Revolution and makes the commissar politically suspect and hints at his probable fate.
At approximately the same time, Lin was diagnosed with TB and put in the hospital's Infectious Diseases Unit. There were two wings there: one filled mainly with TB patients and one with hepatitis patients, both diseases more prevalent in the crowded dirty situations so many Chinese were living in. It is telling that even a physician working and living in a hospital should fall victim to such a disease.
Even without the background though, this is an excellent novel, for we all wait for something. Is waiting active or passive? What is the nature of the thing we wait for, and would we consider it worth waiting for if it was usually readily available? Despite the seemingly straightforward narration, the reader is left seeking the answers to these questions and the broader question, what is the impact of waiting on life in the here and now? show less
Lin Kong married Shuyu in 1963. It was a marriage arranged by his parents. Lin worked as a physician at an army hospital in Muji City. Shuyu stayed back in their village and looked after Lin's parents until their deaths and then tended their farm. Although Shuyu was a model wife by village standards, Lin had been reluctant to bring her to the city, embarrassed by her bound feet, to him a symbol of what he perceived as her overall backwardness.
In Muji, Lin met Manna Wu, a nurse. Hospital rules forbade men and women to meet outside the compound. show more Despite this stricture, the two were drawn together and gradually their interaction at work led others to identify them as a couple, despite the platonic nature of their relationship.
Each year on his twelve day holiday, Lin would return to his village and seek a divorce from Shuyu. Each year she would agree, but once in front of a judge, she would say no. Each year Manna Wu grew older and more frustrated by her situation, while Lin felt more guilty for letting her wait for his divorce, rather than getting on with her life. He tried to arrange other marriages for her, but nothing came of it.
The work unit had a rule that a divorce could be granted without the other partner's consent after eighteen years of separation. In the eighteenth year, Lin returned to his village with high hopes.
[Waiting] is a far bleaker novel than [In the Pond]. The twenty odd years of Chinese history it spans provide a background and context to the story.
In the winter of 1966 the hospital undertook camp-and-field training. For some reason a top general in Northeastern Military Command had issued orders in October that all the army had to be able to operate without modern vehicles, which not only were unreliable but also could soften the troops. The orders said "We must carry on the spirit of the Long March and restore the tradition of horses and mules."
For a month, a third of the hospital's staff would march four hundred miles through the countryside and camp at villages and small towns. Along the way, they would practice treating the wounded and rescuing the dying from the battlefield.
This may sound farfetched, but it is entirely plausible. It refers not only to a time of fuel and parts shortages, but also to an extremely tense period along the Sino-Soviet border.
Books by foreign authors, either in translation or in the original language were highly problematic. In an unguarded moment in 1972, a commissar explains to Manna Wu how he came across his translation of [Leaves of Grass]:
I got this copy twenty years ago from the translator himself...when I was a student...He was a well read man, a true scholar, but he died of pneumonia in 1957. Perhaps it was good for him to die young. With his problematic family background, he could hardly have escaped becoming a target for political movements.
He goes on to explain that this translation has been out of print since the early fifties. This was not a book you would want to be found with during the Cultural Revolution and makes the commissar politically suspect and hints at his probable fate.
At approximately the same time, Lin was diagnosed with TB and put in the hospital's Infectious Diseases Unit. There were two wings there: one filled mainly with TB patients and one with hepatitis patients, both diseases more prevalent in the crowded dirty situations so many Chinese were living in. It is telling that even a physician working and living in a hospital should fall victim to such a disease.
Even without the background though, this is an excellent novel, for we all wait for something. Is waiting active or passive? What is the nature of the thing we wait for, and would we consider it worth waiting for if it was usually readily available? Despite the seemingly straightforward narration, the reader is left seeking the answers to these questions and the broader question, what is the impact of waiting on life in the here and now? show less
"Waiting" may be set in twentieth-century China, but, in other ways "Waiting" will seem like a familiar, perhaps even a classic, story to Western readers. Its description of China's opaque, slow-moving bureaucracy reminded me of those nineteenth-century British novels where the characters' fates depended on the vagaries of inheritance law or the finer points of social convention. The novel's characters make difficult choices, deal with the consequences as best they can and, as the title suggests, wait. The book is appropriately slow and sad, and the author does a wonderful job of showing how difficult it can be to live your life in an environment that's almost entirely dominated by large, inflexible institutions. Manna and Lin's desires show more -- to live with each other as a married couple -- are relatively simple, but in a time and place distinguished by economic scarcity and a lack of personal freedom, this wish takes on the cast of a nearly impossible lifelong project. Ha Jin makes sure the reader understands these characters' hardships, and it doesn't always make this novel an easy read. Even so, despite the fact that the book's setting often seems hopelessly static, the author's also good and tracing the changes that Chinese society underwent from the fifties to the eighties and how they might have affected his characters. The fact that the author is able to convey unchanging routine and encroaching and undeniable social change says a lot about his talents, as does this novel's perfectly calibrated structure. A wonderful example of novel-writing, and an unusual book that may seem simultaneously fresh and familiar to many readers. Recommended. show less
3.5 stars, rounded up.
I am frequently surprised by books that I think will be about one thing and turn out to be about another. This story is set in Communist China, and what I expected was a dissection of that time in history. That was an element, but this book is truly about a man, Lin Kong, who cannot make up his mind how to live his life, and as a result finds himself always waiting for his life to begin.
There is happiness and possibility all around him, but he is never able to grasp any of it. His wife, to whom he has become attached through an arranged marriage, is a peasant woman. She seems too simple, countrified and uneducated for his tastes and position, but his visits home prove to us that he might have been happy in her show more company had he allowed himself to be. He spurns her company and misses the entire life of his daughter, who might have been a source of joy for his life but was not. His mistress, if you can truly call her that, is a well-educated woman with whom he works, but he can never commit himself to her seriously enough to divorce his wife and begin a true life with her. The result is that all three of these people are waiting, always waiting, for his decision, for him to act, for life to begin.
The story is written in a clipped style that suggests the thoughts and confusion of Lin Kong. I found it appropriate for this story, although it is bleak and almost depressing at times. I felt varying emotional reactions to each of these three people at different times in the story, for like all human beings, they are complex and not always likable. Perhaps the wife is a little cliche, dutiful and self-deprecating, but I do think there would have been women in this situation at the beginning of the transition to Mao’s China. Old worlds do not give way to new worlds without catching some people in the middle.
If nothing else, this book reminds us that our lives are limited things--best to live them while you can. show less
I am frequently surprised by books that I think will be about one thing and turn out to be about another. This story is set in Communist China, and what I expected was a dissection of that time in history. That was an element, but this book is truly about a man, Lin Kong, who cannot make up his mind how to live his life, and as a result finds himself always waiting for his life to begin.
There is happiness and possibility all around him, but he is never able to grasp any of it. His wife, to whom he has become attached through an arranged marriage, is a peasant woman. She seems too simple, countrified and uneducated for his tastes and position, but his visits home prove to us that he might have been happy in her show more company had he allowed himself to be. He spurns her company and misses the entire life of his daughter, who might have been a source of joy for his life but was not. His mistress, if you can truly call her that, is a well-educated woman with whom he works, but he can never commit himself to her seriously enough to divorce his wife and begin a true life with her. The result is that all three of these people are waiting, always waiting, for his decision, for him to act, for life to begin.
The story is written in a clipped style that suggests the thoughts and confusion of Lin Kong. I found it appropriate for this story, although it is bleak and almost depressing at times. I felt varying emotional reactions to each of these three people at different times in the story, for like all human beings, they are complex and not always likable. Perhaps the wife is a little cliche, dutiful and self-deprecating, but I do think there would have been women in this situation at the beginning of the transition to Mao’s China. Old worlds do not give way to new worlds without catching some people in the middle.
If nothing else, this book reminds us that our lives are limited things--best to live them while you can. show less
Now this is a feminist novel. i thought it was gonna be about me, sorta, and it certainly fucking wasn't. Here's what it was: woman loves man. Man loves woman. Man is too ridden with guilt and inertia to leave his longsuffering, unloved and devoted wife. And so everything hangs on him, and everybody suffers, and each year he goes home to divorce her and fails and they're all a year older.
And it makes you pause, because Lin isn't the hero, even if he gets more face time than anyone else. Like all of us men, he's just a loser who gets to be protagonist by virtue of his gender. All the situations and arrangements exist at his instigation or sufferance, and he dithers, unaware or maybe even a little little bit pleased with his unassailable show more ability to set the agenda for these women's lives, interpret all their needs and fears.
They're the heroes - Manna and Shuyu, and by extension, every woman we inevitably jerk around, whether by being a dick or a "nice man." Lin Kong is the latter or at least a man of thought rather than decisive action, and as such this book is not entirely dissimilar thematically to a Hamlet that knows the real story is what happens between him and Ophelia.
But also totally different. And the insight into Cultural Revolution-era mores and the way traditional society was translated through the Maoist lens (and to an extent through post-Deng capitalism, although the story peters out about then) is fascinating. show less
And it makes you pause, because Lin isn't the hero, even if he gets more face time than anyone else. Like all of us men, he's just a loser who gets to be protagonist by virtue of his gender. All the situations and arrangements exist at his instigation or sufferance, and he dithers, unaware or maybe even a little little bit pleased with his unassailable show more ability to set the agenda for these women's lives, interpret all their needs and fears.
They're the heroes - Manna and Shuyu, and by extension, every woman we inevitably jerk around, whether by being a dick or a "nice man." Lin Kong is the latter or at least a man of thought rather than decisive action, and as such this book is not entirely dissimilar thematically to a Hamlet that knows the real story is what happens between him and Ophelia.
But also totally different. And the insight into Cultural Revolution-era mores and the way traditional society was translated through the Maoist lens (and to an extent through post-Deng capitalism, although the story peters out about then) is fascinating. show less
This is the second time I read this book. The first time, I totally dismissed it as boring. This time, I had more time and perhaps more patience. This book requires patience. It's slow, somewhat repetitious, yet interesting. The culture of China during the 1960-70's is more than just a backdrop to the story. The affects of the Cultural Revolution and the overwhelming philosophy of control so shape the main character that he is unable to come to grips with who he really is. He is a doctor, a brother, a husband, a father, a government worker, and those roles always determine what he thinks and who he is. He almost never contradicts what he thinks is expected of him; his life is always determined by others especially others who are the show more least personally involved in his life. His respect and feelings for his boss, his roommates, his professional acquaintances is stronger than his respect or feelings of his wife and the "other woman". Only his daughter can cause some kind of emotional reaction in him.
Lin is a person who is entirely shaped by others, what people think and how they react to him. Everything is analyzed; nothing is felt. The wife, Shuyu, is almost unbelievably complacent, but again, that's the role that the culture assigned her. Manna, the woman who waits eighteen year to finally marry him, shows the most independent emotion, but she also is so restricted by the culture. This is a sad book in many ways. Lin thinks at one point: "How we're each sequestered in our own suffering" His life is an example of unintended selfishness; he simply knows no other way to be. He has no ability to emotionally connect with those who should be closest to him.
It is so subtly sad that it is humorous at times. The deception and posturing of the characters is so exaggerated in places that it is laughable. Laughable to us in modern American; seriously repressive to those lives we see in this novel.
The writing is beautifully done; the reader can almost feel the chill which seems to pervade the buildings and the air itself. It is a dreary and lifeless environment. The buildings are functional, concrete, where a few cuttings of red paper on the window can create a "festive" feel. Lin, in his effort to be perfect, simply forgets to live. He was "certain ..between love and peace of mind he would choose the later. He would prefer a peaceful home." Just too bad that love and relationships have to mess it all up.
If you want an exciting read, this isn't it, but if you want to meet a man who is the exact opposite of Zorba, the Greek, come meet Lin Kong. show less
Lin is a person who is entirely shaped by others, what people think and how they react to him. Everything is analyzed; nothing is felt. The wife, Shuyu, is almost unbelievably complacent, but again, that's the role that the culture assigned her. Manna, the woman who waits eighteen year to finally marry him, shows the most independent emotion, but she also is so restricted by the culture. This is a sad book in many ways. Lin thinks at one point: "How we're each sequestered in our own suffering" His life is an example of unintended selfishness; he simply knows no other way to be. He has no ability to emotionally connect with those who should be closest to him.
It is so subtly sad that it is humorous at times. The deception and posturing of the characters is so exaggerated in places that it is laughable. Laughable to us in modern American; seriously repressive to those lives we see in this novel.
The writing is beautifully done; the reader can almost feel the chill which seems to pervade the buildings and the air itself. It is a dreary and lifeless environment. The buildings are functional, concrete, where a few cuttings of red paper on the window can create a "festive" feel. Lin, in his effort to be perfect, simply forgets to live. He was "certain ..between love and peace of mind he would choose the later. He would prefer a peaceful home." Just too bad that love and relationships have to mess it all up.
If you want an exciting read, this isn't it, but if you want to meet a man who is the exact opposite of Zorba, the Greek, come meet Lin Kong. show less
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Above all, what he accomplishes in the book is to place the story amid the politics without the latter being given any undue significance or credence. As in most ordinary lives, even those lived in extraordinary times, political upheaval is but another condition to be surmounted, circumnavigated, forged or ignored. A lesser writer would have taken the usual route, politicizing the personal, show more overwhelming the larger matters of the human heart, specially the most ordinary of human hearts, with the smaller explosions of mob activity. But not Jin. show less
added by Shortride
A deceptively simple tale, written with extraordinary precision and grace. Ha Jin has established himself as one of the great sturdy realists still writing in a postmodern age.
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Ha Jin observes everything about army and civilian life, yet he tells the reader only -- and precisely -- as much as is needed to make his deceptively simple fiction resonate on many levels: the personal, the historical, the political..''Waiting'' also generously provides a dual education: a crash course in Chinese society during and since the Cultural Revolution, and a more leisurely but show more nonetheless compelling exploration of the less exotic terrain that is the human heart. ...''Waiting'' can be read as a long and eloquent answer to Manna's question, an all too rare reminder of the reasons someone might feel so strongly about a book. show less
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Ha Jin left his native China in 1985 and is now a professor of English at Emory University. He is author of, among other works, two short-story collections: Ocean of Words, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, and Under the Red Flag, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction. His novel Waiting won the National Book Award for fiction in show more 1999. He lives in Atlanta. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Waiting
- Original title
- WAITYING
- Alternate titles
- Te wapen
- Original publication date
- 1999
- People/Characters
- Lin Kong; Manna Wu (Lin's girlfriend); Shuyu (Lin's wife); Hua (Lin's daughter); Bensheng (Lin's brother-in-law); Mai Dong (Shuyu's first boyfriend)
- Important places
- China
- Dedication
- For Lisha, Alone and Together
- First words
- Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)She sounded so pleasant that Lin noticed her voice was still resonant with life.
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