Xuefei Jin, more commonly known as Ha Jin, is a contemporary Chinese-American poet and novelist. He was born on February 21, 1956 in Liaoning, China, located in the southernmost part of Manchuria. Ha Jin takes his name from his favorite city of Harbin. Harbin is the capital and largest city of Heilongjiang, a Northeastern province of the People’s Republic of China. He is associated with the misty poetry movement; a group of 20th century poets who reacted against the restrictions on art during the Cultural Revolution. They were given their name because their work has been denounced as obscure, misty, or hazy. The Crazed was the hardest novel for Ha to write. He began writing it in 1988 as his first novel, but didn’t finish it until 2002 as his 8th book. He claims he did not have all the requirements to write the book at the time and had to continually take breaks from writing it.
Ha’s father was an officer in the Red Army, which caused his family to move around frequently. His father was a General until the ranks were taken away. He grew up with four brothers and one sister during early Communist China. He only had a brief and incomplete education, attending an army boarding school after kindergarten. He did not spend much time with his family while attending the boarding school, only going home every other Sunday. The schools closed in 1966 at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution and at the age of 13, Ha joined the People’s Liberation Army, the Communist Party of China’s Military. He was stationed at the border of China and the former Soviet Union. He also worked as a telegraph operator, where he began to learn English by listening to the radio and reading other English authors. At the age of 16, he started to educate himself in Chinese Literature and other high school curriculum. At 19, he left the army to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in English at Heilongjiang University. When the schools reopened, students were given an entrance exam and assigned to study a subject based on their scores. Apparently, Ha did not score very well on this exam so was assigned to study English. He then went on to earn his Masters in Anglo-American Literature at Shandong University and then eventually his PhD in American Literature from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
At first, due to the forcible put down of the Chinese Government, he was hesitant to immigrate to the United States, so decided to write in English “to preserve the integrity of his work”. After moving to the United State, Ha had intentions of returning back to China, but after the Tiananmen Square incident decided it was best to stay in America. In his lifetime in America, he has only returned to China a few times, but never to his home city. He did not feel comfortable that even though he was allowed to go back, his books were banned. They were banned, not only because of their subjects but because most of them offended Chinese authorities. When he was writing, Ha had no intentions of being political but in China, it is impossible to avoid politics. In an interview with Ha done by the Paris Review, he explains that the authorities are afraid of truthful stories told from an individual’s point of view. He also goes one to say that by writing in English, it is viewed as a betrayal of his mother tongue. He said that he would have never written if he had stayed in China.
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In Ha Jin’s The Crazed, the protagonist’s professor and mentor and would-be father-in-law, Mr. Yang, suffers from a stroke and sinks into a delirium. Mr. Yang begins speaking in a sort of encrypted language of a lunatic that feels reminiscent of Prince Hamlet’s speech which was “pregnant with meaning” during his feigned insanity. The image of the bedridden, deteriorating Mr. Yang becomes one that warrants overwhelming scrutiny because it asks us and the characters within the text to seek the place where insanity and wisdom intersect. And one of the main themes of Mr. Yang’s language is existential—“save my soul!”—that hinges overwhelmingly to a question of the genuineness and power of art. See, this man was a professor of literature and poetics, he dedicated his entire life to the study of art, its relationship to the human condition. He even claimed that when he was being politically persecuted that Dante had saved his life, thus claiming that poetry and art itself has the capacity to protect and redeem a life. But this idea—that a poem could be so powerfully restorative—wavers substantially before Mr. Yang dies. He suddenly begins to believe that art is disingenuous, that the title of “intellectual” for those who study art in China is a horrible misnomer, that actually they are clerks blindly taking orders, contributing to political homogeny. I think that this crisis of sorts, this assertion that art is produced and studied by political marionettes, comes with and is strictly dependent upon Mr. Yang’s new found relationship with propaganda music (here’s a link to some of it, no translation but at least you can get an idea of sound, it feels a bit sermonizing to me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls5fgD2_bF8). During his delirium, Mr. Yang bellows these songs which, ultimately, symbolize the base and horrible dilution of art in any form, and I think he realizes that all art is vulnerable to this sort of manipulation and these songs force Mr. Yang to inspect the authenticity of all art and its position in his life.
I do, though, think that music is particularly vulnerable to manipulation and dilution because of its pure, undeniable seductiveness, its repetitiveness, and its intrinsic invitation for audience participation. In her recent article, “One more time,” Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis (http://aeon.co/magazine/altered-states/why-we-love-repetition-in-music/) talks about the universality of repetition in music. She says that repetition instinctually correlates to musicality in all cultures, and that if you were to repeat one or two words on an endless loop it suddenly would begin to sound like a song, and that once it begins to sound like a song, the way that we as individuals analyze and interact with those words completely changes (it’s pretty cool, if you click on the link I have of the article, there’s a voice demo a little ways down the page: click the first one.). When you listen to something musically, Margulis claims, “you aren’t so much listening to as listening along with,” it becomes a game of predictions, where when you hear the beginning of a repeated phrase the end of that phrase automatically comes to mind—music, in this sense, can teach people how to think while at the same time making those people feel falsely clever for knowing what to think. So, phrases within these songs that Mr. Yang sings are repeated—“The Proletarian Cultural Revolution/ is good, is good, is good, is good!” (p.21); “Let us unite closely—to defeat/ The vicious American wolves!/ To defeat the vicious American wolves!” (p.121)—so that if someone heard these songs a few times it would begin to feel a bit like a really easy grammar quiz about linking verbs: The Proletarian Cultural Revolution is what? Is good; Let us unite closely to defeat whom? The vicious American wolves. The simplicity of it is empowering to the listener, the listener knows the answer to these questions and that makes him or her feel smart and therefore makes these songs feel so deceptively lovable and valuable.
It seems that Mr. Yang has discovered the deceptiveness of these songs and he wonders if he had been similarly manipulated by art, consumed by the idea of his own cleverness when he was actually being disempowered and fooled. It happens to us as readers of this book, too. We are lulled into a sort of routine—Jian goes to the hospital, Mr. Yang says something bizarre, Jian’s interest is piqued and he eavesdrops and asks a ton of rhetorical questions, wash, rinse, repeat, come back again tomorrow (ok, perhaps there’s a tiny bit more variation than that, but you get the idea). But that repetitiveness gets totally turned on its head, the professor dies, the Tiananmen Square protests begin encroaching on our consciousness, the repetitive “song” completely abandons it prescribed track and we as readers feel so disoriented and surprised, that we can’t help but question the feeling of calm familiarity we had when visiting Mr. Yang in the hospital. Mr. Yang’s moment of realization of his own position as a “clerk,” too, comes as almost a break to a song, like he is momentarily free from the clutches of repetition—which he sometimes submits to, becoming the parrot of other people’s words. On page 153, when proclaiming his demeaning position as clerk, the outside world itself, even threatening to invade the quiet space, is singing, is performing music as part of a song, “you could hear sparrows twittering outside, one of them drumming its wings.” The hospital room becomes in this moment a reprieve, a break from the song, the drumming, that must have been blaring outside.
Do you think that Mr. Yang’s delirium—that begins with submission and ends with disdain—could be interpreted, as this scene might indicate, as a counteraction to propaganda music? Do you think that though not at Tiananmen Square, nor probably aware of what was happening there, that Mr. Yang could be considered a “counterrevolutionary”?
Do you think that propaganda music and its presence in the text forces you to question the authenticity of all art mentioned within the novel as well as the novel itself? Do you think that perhaps the term “the crazed” refers to the people lulled and fully transformed and manipulated by this music?
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The massacre at Tiananmen Square during the night on June 3rd, 1989 began with the death of Hu Yaobang, a leading reformist and chief of the Communist Party. Starting on April 15th, people went to Tiananmen Square to mourn the leader’s death, but also to “express their dissatisfaction with the pace of reform in China.” According to BBC News, “Students, workers, and officials shout slogans calling for greater freedom and democracy and an end to what they called dictatorship – others complain about inflation, salaries, and housing.” At most, there were close to a million protesters in Tiananmen Square during the seven weeks they occupied Beijing’s central locale.
After several failed attempts to persuade the protesters to leave, China’s Communist Party authorities began to use force on the peaceful protesters on May 20th, sending nearly 300,000 troops into the city of Beijing at the command of leader Deng Xiaoping. However, the Square still was not cleared, and on May 30th the student protesters erected the “Goddess of Democracy” statue, an act of defiance that represented their requests from the Chinese government. This caused the Communist Party to react by “clearing” Tiananmen Square via troops and tanks from the People’s Liberation Army and People’s Armed Police.
The Chinese government claimed (and still claims) that no one was killed in Tiananmen Square itself, although several hundred people were killed once military troops opened fire on the unarmed protesters. Due to strict censorship by the Chinese government, many of the specifics about the Tiananmen Square massacre are unknown; this includes the exact number of people killed, which ranges from hundreds to thousands depending on the source.
In the climax of the novel, Jian Wen goes to Beijing during the student protests in Tiananmen Square after he and Meimei have broken up. Although the narrator seems apathetic about the protests and they are not a driving force in the novel, the idea of censorship in China is quite prominent. Ha Jin’s choices to make censorship a central theme and to frame it around the Tiananmen Square massacres in June of 1989 are obviously highly political, anti-Communist comments to make. Interestingly, Ha Jin did not initially intend to have the Tiananmen Square protests present in The Crazed; his first draft was published in 1988, before any of the events that led to this major massacre that is still left somewhat unexplained. In a review of Jin’s second novel by The Guardian, Sarah Smith writes:
“The linking of this small-scale tragedy with the national disaster in Beijing makes literary sense, bringing as it does a whole new cast of characters who fit the title, from the student protesters to the army commanders who respond to them with the tank fire. But Ha Jin was not a witness to the Tiananmen massacre (he left China in 1985 to study in America and, unsurprisingly, decided not to return after 1989). Vital as it is to keep the atrocity in the public mind, his account has little to add to what we already know.”
How does Ha Jin incorporate the massacre at Tiananmen Square into The Crazed without it consuming the novel? Does the author, as the review suggests, have “little to add” to the political atmosphere and censorship in China in 1989? Or is he making a larger statement about Communism, censorship, and freedom in China?
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Christianity plays a significant role in the Crazed. One of the major references the book makes to Christianity is the section about Mr. Yang’s version of the book of Genesis. His version of the book is quite different from what is written in the Bible itself, which is expressed clearly through Jian’s reaction to the story, even though he had never read the book of Genesis in its entirety. Here is a passage from the book in the Bible:
“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’” Genesis 1:26
And here is how Mr. Yang’s story starts out:
“When God created heaven and earth, all creatures were created equal. He did not intend to separate man from animals. All the creatures enjoyed not only the same kind of life but also the same span of life. They were equal in every way,” (Jin , pg. 9).
As you can see these two contradict in this regard. I encourage you to read at least the first chapter of the book of Genesis, how does it compare to Mr. Yang’s version in the novel? Why would Ha Jin have his character represent the book in this way? What does Mr. Yang’s version of it show about his character? Or even the mentality in China of that time? It is interesting how the author even mentions that getting a full copy of the novel into China at that time was practically impossible.
We have talked about Dante in relation to some other pieces in this class already; Mr. Yang speaks of the Divine Comedy multiple times throughout the novel. The Professor also cries out in different contexts about saving his soul, and being worthy of his suffering. How do the references in the book relate to Dante’s work?
With the novel taking place in communist China, many things can be referenced to such and Marx as well. One of Marx’s most paraphrased quotes it “Religion is the opiate of the people”. How does this quote, and Marx’s teaching on Religion, show the views and feelings on religion within the context of communist China within the novel?
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A key point in The Crazed is the overhanging political environment. We first hear about something political in one of Mr. Yang’s intense rants when he begins to sing of political songs and Chairman Mao. Similarly, there is also the overhang regarding the student protests happening in Tiananmen Square throughout early parts of the novel, while eventually escalating. Jian would often describe himself as though he wasn’t a political person, and that he chooses to stray away from politics. This is particularly interesting, seeing as multiple times his background would suggest that he should be more politically inclined. For example, Jian mentions that his father was banished away for thirty years due to the Cultural Revolution. Jian hears stories from Mr. Yang about being tortured and persevering, despite the environment that he found himself in.
I would like to present on the environment created by the Cultural Revolution. It almost feels like a dark spirit that both Jian and Ha Jin only want to refer to tangentially at certain points in the book, but the more I thought of this the more untrue I realized this could be. People reading his novel had to know at least something about China’s government at the time – what they would be gaining from reading Ha Jin’s novel regarding China’s political scene would be the way his characters addressed their thick political climate. Which I believe is pointed at quite fantastically in the scene at the art exposition. Jian is looking at the painting of 100 Donkeys and is admiring it until he begins to think about Mr. Yang’s Genesis re-telling. He goes on to say that the world “humanizes animals and animalizes humans.” What do you make of that line? I think that is an incredibly bold thing to think regarding the social climate you live in, and Jian doesn’t even say it aloud. But the chiasmus is quite profound, all the same.
Essentially I will be delving into the Cultural Revolution, which will involve opening the greater conversation surrounding Mao Zedong and some of his policies. In particular, I want to briefly look at some of his programs, like the “Down to the Countryside Movement”, which dealt with those individuals getting educated in universities. The one thing that struck me as odd in some of Ha Jin’s slanted musings on politics was the number of times people were banished or forcibly sent to different parts of the country. This seems incredibly foreign to me, and it seems insane that a character like Jian who is supporting his new family wouldn’t have some political stance when mentioning his own father got banished for over 30 years.
Some early questions that might be worth looking at: Do you think having a political knowledge is more important than having one brought up in education and the humanities? Is it foolish to ignore a political climate that you live in, holding onto a hope that education will be enough? And, as stated above, what do you make of that line: “… I realized how people had humanized animals and animalized human beings.”?
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While reading The Crazed I found the education system in China very interesting. Through Jian Wan we get an in depth view of the educational experience that a graduate student would have in post Cultural Revolution China. Jian Wan’s experiences at his university made me wonder about the history of Chinese education. The father of Chinese Education can be traced back to Confucianism. Confucianism was considered so important in ancient China that the first Chinese Civil Service had a section dedicated wholly to the study of Confucius. This study of Confucius remained central to Chinese education until 1911 When the Qing Dynasty was overthrown and a the new, republican government created a new model of education based of Europe, Japan, and America. http://www.chinaeducenter.com/en/chistory.php
This focus on Confucianism reminds me of the Political Ideology that Jian Wan is worried about on his test to get into a good university. His education is as focused on learning and parroting propaganda as it is about what he has learned through his studies; which is similar to Civil Service tests that stressed knowledge of Confucius over practical knowledge. Through my research I found that the Chinese education system was during the time Jian Wan was in school was under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese Communist Party stressed expertise in current political ideology, enforced absolute leadership in research and administration, and making sure that administrators believed in the proper party line. The Chinese Communist Party used one of two different sub models in order to make sure their college taught the ideology that they wanted to be promoted; the Academic model and the Revolutionary model. The Revolutionary model was used from 1966- 1976 and placed the party committee as the ruling party of the university, which focused primarily on Mao Zedong’s revolution and his Communist ideology. This system was more concerned with creating loyal citizens than expert thinkers. The leadership was the Communist committee and the ruling ideology was strictly Maoism. The Academic model, which the Chinese Communist Party switched to in 1976, gave the university president more power over academics and affairs than the Communist Committee; however the party ideology was still enforced. The primary goal of the Academic model was to develop and modernize China while producing trained expert and scholars. Leadership in this model was spearheaded by intellectuals who were loyal to the party. This model followed an ideology based on Maoism, but allowed for a little more deviation than the Revolutionary model. The Academic model is what our protagonist Jian Wan is studying under.
file:///C:/Users/Sam/Downloads/4139-8155-2-PB.pdf
Since the 1980’s China has made many changes to its education system. All schools are controlled by the Ministry of education. Each institutions president works under a Chinese Communist Party Committee. Chinese higher education systems have undergone many changes including devolution; responsibilities of colleges given to other institutions so they can be more autonomous, Mergers; combination of institutions to increase efficiency, Private Higher Education, and many more in hopes to modernize their education system. When looking at the China’s higher education system the progress it appears that much has been done in the ways of creating scholars and experts, but the Chinese Communist Party is still the in charge university. While progressing in on area, it seems to have become stagnant in other, equally important areas.
http://gse.buffalo.edu/org/inthigheredfinance/files/Country_Profiles/Asia/China.pdf
Some question that occurred to me through my reading and research are:
What is the government’s role in education? What does Ha Jin argue?
What rights do citizens have in regards to education?
Has the American education system become stagnant? While the United States struggles to compete at the High School level of education, 21st according to Wikipedia, why does it remain among the top places to get a college education?
World Lit 2014 