Ha Jin is subtle. He doesn't beat us over the head with an overview of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. So the non-Chinese reader can be a little lost here without that background. (The best preparation I can think of is Nien Cheng's magnificent Life and Death in Shanghai.) The Cultural Revolution was a world turned upside down. Anyone subject to foreign influences---intellectuals, officials, students, artists and dissidents---were labeled "rightists" or "counterrevolutionaries." They were humiliated, imprisoned, demoted and fired from their positions. They were sent to labor and re-education camps where they were tortured and killed. The impact on the lives of innocent Chinese is almost beyond imagination. In their biography, Mao, authors Chang and Halliday claim that 70 million Chinese were killed by Mao in peacetime due to his various wrong-headed policies.In the case of the novel's Professor Yang, it is clear that his life has been utterly destroyed by the Cultural Revolution, and that the stroke he has 12 years later is merely its long term result. Sent to a re-education camp during the period--roughly 1966-76--Yang drifts away from his wife, who takes up with another man to get by in Chinese society. Yang may understand the practicality of that move on some level, but after the stroke, when we come upon him in the hospital, out pours all his humiliation and invective in an almost nonstop torrent of abuse. Narrator Jian, Yang's student, watches over him while arrangements are made for Yang's family members to care for him. During this time he pieces together the tragedy of his teacher's life, and he becomes determined not to repeat it. He realizes his own life must change after a last minute trip to Tiananmen Square. It is 1989, just before the Red Army cracks down on the the student movement. Ha Jin presents the reader with a pattern: Prof. Yang's life destroyed by the Cultural Revolution, and now the threat of Tiananmen on narrator Jian's, who becomes hunted as a "counterrevolutionary." The cycle of history repeats itself. Jian admits:I saw China in the form of an old hag so decrepit and brainsick that she would devour her children to sustain herself. Insatiable, she had eaten many tender lives before, was gobbling up new flesh and blood now, and would surely swallow more. Unable to suppress the horrible vision, all day I said to myself, 'China is an old bitch that eats her own puppies!' How my head throbbed, and how my heart writhed and shuddered! With the commotion of two nights ago still in my ears, I feared I was going to lose my mind.Thus Jian becomes one of the "crazed," too. There are, Jin implies, millions like him. China has learned nothing from its own past since it possesses no genuine tradition of historical inquiry. In the Santayanan sense then it is doomed to repeat its worst mistakes. But Jian sees the pattern, and he is determined not to be devoured.
My father is a history fiend. He loves reading historical novels and learning about the past. One year over the holidays my three siblings and I, without any planning or discussion amongst us, all purchased him gifts of books or videos on World War II. I think he finally reached the point of being overwhelmed by historical information.I've read several of my father's books, but have never been able to embrace history the way he does. I do like it though when a book is able to take a historical event and feed it to you in such a way that you get to read a compelling story and not the dry history of schooldays. I like to get lost in the story, but finish the book feeling smarter about the past. While I don't gobble up history the way my father does, I think that he is smart to learn about what has happened before us so he can better understand our present and future.In The Crazed, by Ha Jin, we are introduced to a communist China of the 1980s. What is presented as a mystery that unravels through the delusional rants of a sick old man is actually a statement on the political atmosphere of China for intellectuals during the late 80s.The Crazed follows Jian Wan and his relationship with his teacher, Professor Yang. Jian is engaged to Professor Wan's daughter, Meimei, so when the professor suffers a stroke he feels doubly obligated to care for his teacher. During long hospital visits where Professor Wang speaks at length in the form of poems, unintelligible chatter and memories seemingly long lost, Jian starts to piece together a past to his professor's life that neither he, nor the professor's daughter, was ever aware of. He also gets insight into the life of an academic - a life that Jian is in the process of pursuing himself.While the mystery of Professor Wang's life unfolds, in the background of the story always lurks the political climate of the area. If Jian passes his exams and is able to go on to study for his PhD, he will get to move to Beijing and be near his fiancé, Meimei. In Beijing there are student demonstrations occurring to protest the government. Through their letters back and forth, Jian and Meimei share their feelings on the protests. Jian's roommates also discuss with him their points of view on what is going on in the city.Both the storyline about Professor Wang and that of the politics of China collide when Jian finds himself in Beijing. And then, in a very subtle way, Ha Jin is able to introduce his reader to a perspective on the Beijing student protests that might be new. While his reader is engrossed in his compelling story, he pulls out the great surprise of teaching a little history.
What do You think about The Crazed (2015)?
Having read Ha Jin's "Waiting", I was anxious to read this novel. Ha Jin writes about contemporary Chinese society. The story revolves around Jian who is a university student. One of his favourite professors has a stroke and is hospitalized. Jian commits to looking after this man every afternoon. Jian is also engaged to this man's daughter which makes him feel obligated to spend time with him. During the professors hospitalization, he rants and raves about his colleagues, his family, the university and politics, revealing intimate and unsuspecting things Jian has never heard. Jian is not certain if these radical rantings are a manifestation of his illness or if he is speaking the truth.There is much poetry cited, and not being a particular lover or having a great understanding of poetry, I found these parts to be uninteresting. The dim situation that Jian was put in to look after his future father-in-law and having to give up studying for entrance exams, gave me a desperate feeling. The story on the whole kind of dragged me down. This was also during the time of the horror of events at Tianammen Square, and the writing reflected well the situation.
—Julia
I picked up this book because quite frankly I was excited to find a beautiful hardcover book in one of the local Little Free Libraries. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would and wondered if I had been drawn to the subject matter on a subconscious level. The focus is on a young graduate student, Jian Wan, who helps take care of his professor, Yang, who has suffered a stroke. His professor begins raving in his delirium and the student begins to learn not only more about his professor but also begins to doubt his own life. In the meantime, the student uprisings in Tiananmen Square have also begun to come to a boil.I was drawn to this one thinking about my own grandmother who recently suffered from a series of strokes. However, I like the way the personal lives of the characters unfolded here. The personal, professional and political are all intertwined in very twisted and unexpected ways. The reason I gave this one four instead of five stars is because I am a little unsure of how I feel about the ending. It feels a bit abrupt, but perhaps that is best. I need to think about it some more. In any case, I'm glad to have "discovered" Ha Jin and found this one well worth the read.
—Inda
The Crazed was the first of Ha Jin’s books I read after stumbling across it as a new release when working at a public library. I did not remember much about the book other than a considerable feeling of disappointment and a few of the main characters. After re-reading War Trash (which has become my favorite of his novels), I decided to revisit The Crazed as well.The Crazed shares many common themes with the better known Waiting. Both novels mix a detailed look at domestic China (complete with the mixed views on post-Mao communism) with a bitter love story--or a series of bitter love stories in the case of The Crazed. However, the rich vividness and vitality of Waiting is oddly missing in Ha Jin’s later novel. The Crazed is a more heavy-handed affair with readers being repeatedly reminded of the distressing excess of communism in even the most mundane ways from prohibiting students the use of electric stoves to the banal stupidities of local political corruption. Ha Jin never relies overtly on scenery and place, but this seemed to be a Conrad-esque character of a landscape. It cheapened an already less evolved narrative and a highly limited cast of character. Ultimately, there are pieces of The Crazed that are still stunning, but they are wed to an overall novel that is just not as powerful or subtle as Ha Jin’s other works.There was an element that remained just as striking in my second reading as it was in my first, although I do not know if it is entirely intentional. Ha Jin demonstrates the overwhelming geographical scale of China quite effectively, a feature often lost in literature that turns frequently to the equally large scale of China’s population. He does this by keeping the student protests and the Tiananmen Square massacre at the fringes of the novel throughout the book. They are both forces at work in the society of The Crazed, but their presence can be described as minor echoes until Jian, the protagonist, makes an ill-fated decision to join some of his fellow students in a trip to Beijing to join the protestors. Even accounting for official efforts to suppress the scale of the protest movement, the world of The Crazed is equally removed from the popular stirrings by them simply being too distant for much practical impact other than driving action among already dissatisfied local radicals.Overall, I am sort of amazed I picked Ha Jin back up with this book being my first exposure to him several years ago. He has far better books to his name, and I recommend either Waiting or War Trash to those wanting to make a first encounter.
—David
