What do you think?
Rate this book
Alive
An eBook short.
From one of our most celebrated contemporary writers, winner of the National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award: Ha Jin’s staggering story “Alive,” from the collection The Bridegroom.
Tong Guhan is a regular businessman, husband, and father, trying to find a job for his daughter and an apartment for his son in rural China. He’s next in line to be Vice Director of the cannery where he works. One morning in late July he makes the eleven hour train trip from Muji City to Taifu, to conduct business for his company that he hopes will finally lead to a promotion and the easy life. The events that follow are nothing short of astonishing, as the very earth shifts under Guhan’s feet. This is Ha Jin’s moving, strange, captivating story of an earthquake and a common man, the ties of family and the powers of circumstance: the perfect introduction to an internationally acclaimed modern master.
From one of our most celebrated contemporary writers, winner of the National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award: Ha Jin’s staggering story “Alive,” from the collection The Bridegroom.
Tong Guhan is a regular businessman, husband, and father, trying to find a job for his daughter and an apartment for his son in rural China. He’s next in line to be Vice Director of the cannery where he works. One morning in late July he makes the eleven hour train trip from Muji City to Taifu, to conduct business for his company that he hopes will finally lead to a promotion and the easy life. The events that follow are nothing short of astonishing, as the very earth shifts under Guhan’s feet. This is Ha Jin’s moving, strange, captivating story of an earthquake and a common man, the ties of family and the powers of circumstance: the perfect introduction to an internationally acclaimed modern master.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
34 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 23, 2014
8 people are currently reading
106 people want to read
About the author
Ha Jin
60 books837 followersHa Jin is the pen name of Jin Xuefei, a novelist, poet, short story writer, and Professor of English at Boston University.Ha Jin writes in English about China, a political decision post-Tiananmen Square.
Ha Jin grew up in mainland China and served in the People’s Liberation Army in his teens for five years. After leaving the army, he worked for three years at a railroad company in a remote northeastern city, Jiamusi, and then went to college in Harbin, majoring in English. He has published in English ten novels, four story collections, four volumes of poetry, a book of essays, and a biography of Li Bai. His novel Waiting won the National Book Award for Fiction, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Ha Jin is William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor in English and Creative Writing at Boston University, and he has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His writing has been translated into more than thirty languages. Ha Jin’s novel The Woman Back from Moscow was published by Other Press in 2023.
Ha Jin grew up in mainland China and served in the People’s Liberation Army in his teens for five years. After leaving the army, he worked for three years at a railroad company in a remote northeastern city, Jiamusi, and then went to college in Harbin, majoring in English. He has published in English ten novels, four story collections, four volumes of poetry, a book of essays, and a biography of Li Bai. His novel Waiting won the National Book Award for Fiction, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Ha Jin is William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor in English and Creative Writing at Boston University, and he has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His writing has been translated into more than thirty languages. Ha Jin’s novel The Woman Back from Moscow was published by Other Press in 2023.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 30, 2017
Alive
A short little read, but packed with so much. After a devastating earthquake in which he loses everything, including his memory, Old Tong doesn't struggle to regain what was lost; instead, he builds his new life without the burden of a past long gone. I think there is something to be said about being "Alive" as Old Tong was.
A short little read, but packed with so much. After a devastating earthquake in which he loses everything, including his memory, Old Tong doesn't struggle to regain what was lost; instead, he builds his new life without the burden of a past long gone. I think there is something to be said about being "Alive" as Old Tong was.
September 27, 2014
Ha Jin is an author where I can't really determine my feelings for. I don't hate him, but I don't love him either. I haven't read enough of him to determine this. I read and reviewed Waiting during my first year of college, the beginning of all educational torture. Then I purchased Nanjing Requiem and kept setting it aside for reasons I'm not sure of. His writing is fine, simple, but reads well enough. He doesn't produce the worse of metaphors or similes. His writing feels like he is actually in my room reading a bed time story, which would be totally awkward. I think what truly puts me off about Ha Jin is that every time I finish a story by him, there's always this incomplete silence, the puzzle comes together, but there is a teeny tiny piece that is missing. The endings aren't very happy either, there seems to be a brutal reality in his stories, the knots are always too tight and painful. Yet there is a strange sort of relief. I hope this all makes sense.
So this little short is basically about a struggling man in China, a part of China I can't remember the name of, a China that I can't tell if it's Post- Cultural Revolution or before it. It's definitely before the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Anyway, this man named, I forgot his name.... It's Guhan, which I kept pronouncing in my head as Gohan, instead of Guhan. Guhan has a son, a daughter, and a wife, a typical nuclear family. He wants to support his son's and daughter's ambitions, but like most stories of Chinese people living in small towns, he can't afford it and the house is too small. He can't buy his son an apartment and he can't get his daughter a job that will keep her close. Then, like most hard working fathers who sacrifice themselves and the world for their family, he goes out of town. Oddly enough, before he leaves, the wife asks him a question that was basically somewhere along the lines of "Are you sure you want to go so far from home?" Foreshadowing at its best, an earthquake happens, he gets knocked around and loses his memory.
It's a touching story and I liked it more than Waiting, but again, I was left with the same feelings. I'm starting to actually understand it and maybe like it, Ha Jin is a bittersweet story teller. After this earthquake, Guhan starts life over again, but when memory kicks back in, he returns, and is left with this conflicted and unsatisfied heart. That is what makes Ha Jin so brilliant, those feelings that are just too human and painful to bear. Too close for comfort.
So this little short is basically about a struggling man in China, a part of China I can't remember the name of, a China that I can't tell if it's Post- Cultural Revolution or before it. It's definitely before the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Anyway, this man named, I forgot his name.... It's Guhan, which I kept pronouncing in my head as Gohan, instead of Guhan. Guhan has a son, a daughter, and a wife, a typical nuclear family. He wants to support his son's and daughter's ambitions, but like most stories of Chinese people living in small towns, he can't afford it and the house is too small. He can't buy his son an apartment and he can't get his daughter a job that will keep her close. Then, like most hard working fathers who sacrifice themselves and the world for their family, he goes out of town. Oddly enough, before he leaves, the wife asks him a question that was basically somewhere along the lines of "Are you sure you want to go so far from home?" Foreshadowing at its best, an earthquake happens, he gets knocked around and loses his memory.
It's a touching story and I liked it more than Waiting, but again, I was left with the same feelings. I'm starting to actually understand it and maybe like it, Ha Jin is a bittersweet story teller. After this earthquake, Guhan starts life over again, but when memory kicks back in, he returns, and is left with this conflicted and unsatisfied heart. That is what makes Ha Jin so brilliant, those feelings that are just too human and painful to bear. Too close for comfort.
July 3, 2016
Florence Nightingale's ideas on patient care, particularly focusing on hygeine and the mental state. Interesting for the insights into that time period and also the universals on human behavior and psyche
December 26, 2014
Conflicted. Unresolved. Beautiful writing, but without resolution.
February 16, 2025
Short story
A short story of a man sent to do a job in another city, however a natural disaster occurs and he loses his memory. This is how he got back to his family, only to wonder if he really should have come back at all, and if it weren't better for them to still believe he were dead.
A short story of a man sent to do a job in another city, however a natural disaster occurs and he loses his memory. This is how he got back to his family, only to wonder if he really should have come back at all, and if it weren't better for them to still believe he were dead.
January 7, 2020
Looking forward to other books by this writer
July 12, 2022
I was really into this story, and then all of a sudden, it abruptly ended. It felt unresolved in every way.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews