Ha Jin
(1956– )
Chinese American writer Ha Jin was born Xuefei Jin in the Liaoning Province of China. Much of his childhood was spent away from his parents. At first, because his parents worked in different towns, he was placed in the care of another couple; later, he was sent away to school.
After China’s Cultural Revolution began, Jin joined the People’s Liberation Army at the age of fourteen. He served in the army for five and a half years. During this time, he studied on his own and developed a desire to go to college. However, because of the government’s policies during the Cultural Revolution, colleges were closed. After he left the army, Jin learned English from a radio program.
In 1977, colleges in China reopened, and Jin attended Heilongjiang University, where he was assigned to study English. After earning a master’s degree in American literature from Shandong University, he traveled to the United States, where he received a Ph.D. from Brandeis and began publishing poetry in English.
After the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Jin decided to stay in the United States. He changed his name to Ha Jin, which was easier for most Americans to pronounce, and found a job teaching at Emory University. Jin published another book of poetry, Facing Shadows, in 1996, and two collections of short stories: the award-winning Ocean of Words (1996), and Under the Red Flag (1997), which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.
Next, Jin moved on to writing longer fiction and published two novels: In the Pond (1998) and Waiting (1999). Recently, Jin moved to Boston to teach at Boston University, and has published another collection of short stories, The Bridegroom (2000), and the novel The Crazed (2002).
