Ha Jin is one of few oversea Chinese who deserve my sincere admiration for their incomparable experience, hard work, and the celebrated achievements. Last week, his new book—“War Trash” won the PEN/Faulkner prize, which firmly established him as one of the most prominent writers. His novel “Waiting” also won this prize in addition to the National Book Award four years ago.

Similar to his previous works, Ha Jin successfully depicted a tragedy in the “War Trash”. This time it was POW life experienced by a Chinese in the Korea War. Yu Yuan, a graduate from the prestigious Huangpu Military Academy, participated in the Korea War without knowing much about Korea. Frozen dead bodies, regular bombs, and ruthless killings frightened the unwilling soldier. Yu Yuan was in the unfortunate 180 division which entered the war in later stage but was completely smashed by U.N. allies due to misleading commands from high-ups and also its incompetent commanders. He was wounded and captured by U.N. allies. Unlike most of his comrades who were illiterate, he was college educated and proficient in English. He developed a good relationship with a (female) doctor who saved his left leg. Even in the prisoner camp, both communists and pro-nationalists valued his abilities. He was treated relatively well during his POW life.

Under the illusion that he would reunite with his fiancée and take good care of his mother, Yu Yuan had a strong mind to return home. Therefore, he was tattooed by pro-nationalists and was enticed to go to Taiwan, while the communists instructed him to stay with them. Even though he involved in many fights in the communist-controlled camp, he was considered useful but not indispensable because he was not a party member and another communist prisoner also knew English. He was marginalized and eventually sacrificed by the communist party. Nevertheless, Yu Yuan managed to grasp the last opportunity to return China. As we all know, those who repatriated (about 7,000 out of 20,000 POW) were treated as “dregs of society”. Thanks to his education, Yu Yuan was able to live as a middle school teacher and uneventfully survived the following “revolutions”.

The story had a sense of reality due to its well mixed facts and imaginations. The conflictions between communists and pro-nationalists, the mistreatment of prisoners by guards, and the camp riots were heartbroken.For instance, for fear of being abandoned by the home country and to attract international attentions, the communist POWs hopeless organized many camp rebellions: the kidnap of a US general, the rise of national flag in National day, and many (not-so-) trivial conflictions between guards and prisoners. In this novel, Ha Jin did a marvelous job to make the story look real.

I was also impressed by the author’s treatment on issues such as the justification of the war itself. The author was apparently reluctant to show his opinion on the involvement of Chinese army during the Korea War.

Although this novel was intended to probe the weakness of human beings, unfortunately, the author opted not to reveal the mind of communist prisoners. From my point of view, it is more interesting to understand how a communist prisoner can manage to hold the communism ideology while struggling against the unfortunate reality. In this novel, there were ample opportunities to explore this issue. For example, in the episode of raising the national flag during the National Day, you may wonder why the communists wanted to organize this fruitless rebellion in the oppressive camp. Why was everybody so enthusiastic about raising flags? How did people maintain high spirits when facing unnecessary deaths? Many communists were brainwashed to such extent that they indeed believed that non-communists were bad people. Many had accepted that their lives were not important compared with the grand aim of liberating the whole world. Many communists and their followers were more than willing to sacrifice their lives for purposes beyond their comprehensions, as a famous slogan goes: “everybody is a nail in socialism revolution”. In this sense, the reflection by Yu Yuan was superficial and sometimes ridiculous. The author’s choice might reflect his dislike of communism (and China in general), as was evident in his writing.

Reality is crueler than petty thoughts. POW experience, particularly those in the foreign wars, is on top of most people’s heads. Ha Jin has provided us a compelling story in an unusual perspective.

It is said that the “War Trash” may be Ha Jin’s last novel about China. I hope this is not true, for his novels are apparently well received by western society.