What do You think about Under The Red Flag: Stories (1998)?
I don't know exactly what to think of this collection. Some of the stories were really blockish and felt cobbled together from left over ideas. Sometimes there were certain parts of stories that have just stayed with me: Like the unhappy bride who throws herself into a well, the pigs crashing through the outhouse, or feasting on top of a great mountain overlooking the town. Some of were also pretty funny as well. I liked this in the overall, but something prevented me from liking it as much as I could have. It was good, no doubt. I just wasn't outright in love with it. I just don't have time to persue everything I only half liked.
—Moktoklee
The premise and tone of Ha Jin’s stories are interesting, playing on conceptions of change and progress in a small Chinese town. Nevertheless, the style can seem dry and occasionally monotonous. As far as spare contemporary Chinese writers are concerned, Ha Jin is not unique.Nevertheless, some stories are more compelling. “A Decade” ties together a string of the speaker’s memory together in a seemingly unrelated way, but eventually using stories-within-stories to bring up ideas of nostalgia, passion and coming of age. Similar ideas were at play in the rest of the book, although not as compellingly.
—Matteo Cavelier
Each story on its own is well-written and powerful. All of the stories express the conflicts of villagers living in communist China. Most of the stories are gruesome and violent and involve bad fortune or outside forces imposing on individual lives. While these common threads make Under the Red Flag a logical collection, when read all at once they sometimes feel a bit formulaic. The reader is not surprised when things don't end well for the characters. My thought just now is that it becomes a bit oppressive to read all of these at once, and oppression is exactly what these stories are meant to convey. Even so, I gave it three stars because I think some stories were stronger than others in conveying this point and I would have rather read them outside of a collection.
—Lindsay
