Waiting

For eighteen years the army doctor Lin Kong shuttles between his home village, where his dutiful arranged wife Shuyu lives, and the city hospital where he loves the modern nurse Manna Wu, bound by a rule that will not let him divorce until the couple have lived apart for eighteen years. Ha Jin sets his quiet tragedy of thwarted love in a real Manchuria: the northern farm village, the county divorce court, and the army hospital city of the Chinese northeast.

Shuyu

Goose Village

The wife

In Goose Village, Lin's plain, bound-footed wife Shuyu keeps his household and raises their daughter with uncomplaining devotion, a woman wholly of the old world. The village, where Lin's arranged marriage ties him to a life and a wife he never chose, is the anchor of duty against which his city longing forever strains.

The village chapters

inspired by Lin Kong's home village, where his arranged wife Shuyu lives, is drawn from the farming villages of rural Manchuria; sited in that region of the Chinese northeast.

Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗