The charming debut novel of Ha Jin is entitled In the Pond(published in 1998). The pond referred to is the provincial factory town where Shao Bin, an artist at heart and with talent, works as a mechanic in a large fertilizer factory. When Bin is denied a new apartment within the park of the factory, he becomes enraged. It was his turn and his right and his due, and Bin wants revenge. Bin convinces himself that “to fight evil is the essential function of fine arts….Whatever they are, painting and writing must not be embroidery and decoration; they must have strength and soul — a healthy, upright spirit. A good piece of work should be as lethal as a dagger to evil doers.“ And so, armed with his calligraphy brushes and his ink, Bin begins his campaign of revenge and exposure.
What follows is a funny but at the same time provoking tale of one man’s quiet but fierce individuality in the face of an oppressive but bumbling Communism. Bin fights against the commune ethic of service and duty, an ethic used by those in power to further their own corrupt goals and to keep the lower workers in line. Bin won’t stand in line. Fueled on by Chairman Mao’s own words, “The boundless joy in fighting heaven, the boundless joy in fighting Earth, the boundless joy in fighting Man!” his fight is a paragon of the David versus Goliath battle. Bin works his way through to higher and higher levels of Chinese communist society, determined to rest only when “all of China” comes to know of his plight.
Bin uses his artistry to prove his case: he knows that the Chinese see beauty and truth as necessary partners. His beautiful pieces of calligraphy and a stamp carving not only convey his talent but his honesty. Again and again, it is not his petition so much as his art, that wins him support.
Throughout the novel we peek into the common life of communist China, a life of deprivation (no one has ever seen a pineapple, much less eaten one, clothes are washed in the river, beds are shared by the entire family) and humiliation (having to write confessions of malfeasance, being docked wages for arriving one hour late, losing a bonus because disrespect was shown to a boss); and yet, the lives we are offered a glimpse of are textured and full, and no less replete in moments of laughter or pleasure than our own. I enjoyed reading the little bits of daily life in Communist China: the foods enjoyed (and not enjoyed); the annual festivals; the propaganda machine that is supposed to keep up morale but has a mixed appeal.
Bin, his comrades and his family love a good joke at someone else’s expense, they are outraged by corruption, they respect artistry and the wisdom of the elders, they are capable of petty jealousies and of sacrifice for a friend, and they want a better life for their children. In other words, they are very human and not so different from us westerners. The two evil-doers, the boss men of the factory, are drawn almost as caricatures in their corruption, their obesity of spirit, and their efforts to keep Bin down, even at one point by sitting on his head. Bin reacts by biting the boss man in the butt. The bitten boss proceeds to have photos of the bite taken and displayed, to show that Bin is a lunatic. Who is the lunatic? The boss who displays his bare bitten butt for all to see or the worker?
Bin’s unique charm worked on me, slowly but surely. At first, I found him a bit annoying and grating, selfish albeit loving toward his wife and daughter, resolute and yet full of doubt. But bit by bit, as Bin shares his love for art, his commitment to its perfection in his own work, and his desire to reach a place all his own through his art, I started to fall for him. When he tells his life story of loss and disappointment, I began to understand him, and by the time he quotes the words of the Russian poet Yesenin, “Oh, the language of my countrymen/Is alien to me all at once./I am a foreigner in my own town,” I understood his plight of a single man trying to raise his voice up, and I was rooting for him all the way.
What Bin achieves by the end of In The Pond is no miracle, and not the stuff of heroes. And yet his own desires were more important to me by the end than any other consideration. Jin quotes Gogol in the front piece before the novel begins, “I still can’t choose a virtuous man as my hero…I feel the time has come to make use of a rogue….” Sho Bin is no rogue, he is a dreamer and an artist who got pushed too far.
Ha Jin’s writing is plain but effective; very much like calligraphy, his words paint a deceptively simple picture of an intriguing story. The book ends with: “Joyously Bin stretched out his right arm, as if he too had wings.” Another trait we share with Shao Bin and his comrades: we all need wings to rise above the petty stuff of life and find the truth and the beauty in living. A book like this gives us beauty and truth, and wings.
