China Waiting by Ha Jun: Essay

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The nature and intent of their friendship was questioned, and they a promise was extracted from them both that they would have no abnormal relationship until Lin was divorced and they were married. It was implied and understood clearly that "abnormal" meant "sexual" and that if they broke this promise, their careers and futures would be in jeopardy. This incident shows the way that Chinese society viewed sex and marriage. Sexual intercourse was a very private thing that a woman reserved for her husband and a man and woman reserved only for marriage. Anyone who was caught to violate this practice was judged to be immoral and would be harshly criticized and even ostracized by the community.

The way that Manna's career in the army is described is redolent of the discrimination that women faced. The reasons for this discrimination changed somewhat during the twenty-year span of the novel, but the fact of the discrimination remained. In the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, women were encouraged to join the army in order to promote socialism and the collective society. Chairman Mao's propaganda lent female officers a high social status and they were regarded as desirable marriage prospects. But as the army became saturated with female staff and officers, thousands of young women were discharged. Society did not understand the political reasons for the women's demobilization and civilians regarded them as "bad women who had lifestyle problems." Many men would refer to them as 'used military supplies.'" (Jin, 2009, p.118) This contributed to Manna's forced wait for Lin to get divorced.

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She could have transfered to another hospital, to escape her reputation as Lin's fiancee and to seek a husband among the doctors or staff there, but her old maid status and the hundreds of more attractive and much younger nurses made it unlikely that many men would seek out her company. If she had requested a discharge from the army and moved to a distant city in search of a husband, she would have been looked at as an undesirable woman with problems.

At the end of the book, Lin was finally granted a divorce from Shuyu under military legislation that allowed an officer to divorce his wife without her agreement after eighteen years of separation. He married Manna and she gave birth to twin boys right away. Manna discovers that she has a heart malfunction and that she probably will not live very much longer. In despair, Lin goes to Shuyu one night and asks if she will help take care of his babies when their mother passes away. In spite of being used and abandoned by her husband, Shuyu agrees to wait for him to come back to her after Manna's death. This is a final, dramatic example of traditional Chinese social norms that once a woman is married, she belongs to her husband forever. Shuyu still thought of Lin as her husband and would do anything that he asked of her, even taking him back into her home after he left her and raising his two sons by another woman as her own......

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