Following an unusual sequence of events that unfolded in the Chicago area and involved three Chinese writers, a publisher controlled by the Beijing government has canceled publication of the novel “Waiting,” the first work by a mainland Chinese author to win a National Book Award.
In a statement issued Wednesday, Random House, which published the novel by Chinese expatriate Ha Jin in the U.S., announced that the Beijing Publishing House has reneged on an agreement to publish the book.
The action followed a highly critical China review in a prominent government-backed publication written by a Chinese scholar who received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and was teaching at the College of Lake County as part of a Fulbright scholarship-in-residence when she met the author last fall.
The scholar, Yi Qing Liu, attended a reading by the author at the college and even went to dinner with him following the presentation. She subsequently returned to China and wrote a scathing critique, claiming the author was being “forced to curse China, disown his parents who live in the Northeast and act as an instrument of the American media to demonize China,” according to translated versions of the review obtained by the Tribune.
Jin is a professor of creative writing at Emory University and had been invited to the College of Lake County by a resident poet there.
In the article, Liu cited a review that appeared in the Oct. 31 edition of the Tribune Books section. The reviewer, a former New York Times staffer in Beijing who has become a freelance writer in Chicago, and the newspaper were not interested in Jin’s words, Liu said, but only the way his book reflected the “backwardness and stupidity of the Chinese.” Liu, who lives in Beijing and is a professor at Beijing University, also criticized a review in Time magazine. .
She could not be reached for comment.
The Beijing Publishing House contacted Random House this week to announce its termination of the deal, which had been made by phone but not sealed with signed documents, according to Random House officials.
Beijing has a long history of banning literature. In the introduction to her critique, Liu wrote that the book “should have been a happy event for Chinese writers because he was the first Chinese from the mainland who received this award and who wrote a Chinese story directly in English,” according to the translated critique. She went on to say the author had betrayed his country by his portrayals of his native land.
The author, who had served in the Chinese People’s Army for six years, got word of the cancellation Friday when a representative from the Beijing Publishing House contacted him at his Atlanta home.
“They told me that because of this article we cannot publish your work. It has become too sensitive,” the author said. “I am very upset about Beijing Publishing House’s cancellation of `Waiting.’ Yi Qing Liu’s article is rife with distortions, but it has served politics well. I hope Chinese people can read the book and make their own judgment.”
In its official statement, Random House officials said, “While the decision by the Chinese publisher to cancel publication of Ha Jin’s `Waiting’ is unfortunate, Pantheon Books believes the novel deserves without question the accolades and prizes it has won, and fully supports Ha Jin and his writing.” Pantheon is a division of Random House.
“Waiting” is scheduled to be translated into 18 languages, including Turkish, Danish and Catalan. It has gone into its ninth printing in the U.S. In addition to winning the 1999 National Book award, the novel received the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for last year’s Pulitzer Prize for literature.
The book tells the story of a Chinese army officer who is forced into a marriage with a peasant woman and spends almost two decades waiting for a divorce so he can marry a nurse he has long loved. Reviewers generally have not seen the book as critical of Chinese society and say it is story of vexed love.
Beyond taking exception to the American media’s praise for the book, Liu also was incensed by an illustration that ran in the Tribune Book section showing the bound feet of a Chinese woman. The wife in the novel has bound feet.
Evanston resident Wen Huang who reviewed “Waiting” for the Tribune, says he isn’t surprised at the Beijing publisher’s action.
“It has been a trend lately,” he said. “When the Chinese in the film and literary world get international recognition, they get accused by Chinese journalists of exposing the ugly side of China to the world.”
The Chinese version of “Waiting” was due out this autumn and had been partially translated when the deal was called off.
Carol Janeway, who was in charge of overseeing foreign rights for the book, said that, given the subject matter, she was surprised there was so much interest in Chinese publication.
“I was delighted when I saw the interest and thought that it must be a sign that China was starting to open up,” Janeway said.
Jin says he expected between $500 and $800 from the publishing deal and that the loss of revenue is not what disappoints him.
“This was not about money. I wanted the Chinese people to read it,” he said. “This is a book about human feelings and psychology and love. The Chinese don’t know that many Americans wept when they were reading it.
“The book is about the similarities between us, not the differences.”
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Born in China in 1956, Jin came to the United States in 1985 to study for his doctorate at Brandeis University. “I tried to return to China after the Tiananmen Square massacre” in 1989, Jin said in a Tribune profile last fall, “but the Chinese government wouldn’t renew my passport.”
He said he wasn’t part of the democracy movement in China, “but I was outspoken about it, and so at the time I had a very great fear.” He had planned to return to a job as a researcher and translator for an institute of American literature at a Chinese university.
In a Tribune story last October about Liu after she arrived at the College of Lake County–a plum hire for a community college–the professor said that one of her goals as a visiting Fulbright scholar was “to contribute to [her colleagues’ and students’] understanding of China.”
Jin is concerned that because many Chinese do not read English, many of them will believe Liu’s critique. He says the claims have affected him publicly and personally.
“When I called my mother recently, she asked me “What did you write to cause this?” he said. His mother does not read English.
The cancellation is unusual but not unheard of in the industry.
“I have seen it happen in two other instances, about 10 years ago in the former Soviet Union and recently in China,” said Janeway, who is vice president, senior editor and international rights director for Knopf Books, which holds the international rights, and who has handled foreign publishing rights for 30 years.
Jin is hopeful that someday the Chinese people will be able to read “Waiting” and judge it for themselves, but for now he and Janeway are not optimistic. Said Janeway, “I think this is going to have a chilling effect on the Chinese publishing community in general.”