Every year, Lin Kong returns to his village to ask his bound-footed, illiterate wife for a divorce. Every year she agrees at first, then backs out at the last minute. Having promised his superiors he would not consummate his love for Wu Manna, the nurse he wishes to marry, the title refers to the 18 years of celibacy the man and his lover endure so they may one day be together.

Buy WAITING Pantheon Books 320 pages, Oct. 1999 Amazon.com Price: $14.40 Also by Ha Jin In the Pond : A Novel Zoland Books 160 pages, Nov. 1998 Amazon.com Price: $14:00. Ocean of Words: Stories Vintage Books 208 pages, Aug. 1998 Amazon.com Price: $9.60 Under the Red Flag : Stories Univ of Georgia Press 224 pages, Nov. 1997 Amazon.com Price: $16.07

In a recent interview with Ha Jin, the Chinese immigrant turned American citizen who wrote "Waiting," Jin explained the novel is an allegory of love. More particularly, it's an exploration of the way that "revolution makes people unable to love each other."

Jin's winning of the National Book Award caps an extraordinary journey from China, where he was born, to the United States, where he is now a citizen.

Radio English

A native of Liaoning Province in northeast China, Jin began learning English when he was 20 years old by listening to a learners program on the radio for a half hour each day. It was 1976 and China was just emerging from ten years of political turmoil known as the Cultural Revolution. Jin had spent that decade and his adolescence in the army, enlisting when he was just 14.

"You either joined the army or you went to the countryside," Jin said. "The army was a better choice because there was more food and you had a job. I got an allowance of about 6 yuan ($.75) a month."

After six years of patrolling the frigid border areas between Manchuria and Siberia, Jin wanted an education. His first choice was to study Chinese literature and library sciences. But even with his limited knowledge of English, gleaned from his radio lessons, he was an expert compared to the 16 other examinees from his hometown. Many of the other examinees didn't even know a single word of the capitalist imperialist tongue. Jin was assigned to study English.

"I just wanted to be a scholar" Q: Your real name is Jin Xuefei. How did you choose the penname Ha Jin? A: Xuefei begins with "X" and very few people can pronounce it. When one of my first poems was accepted by the Paris Review I asked my professor what he thought of Ha Jin. Ha stands for the first part of the city name of Harbin which is near where I grew up. And he said he thought it was good. Since then I have used it. Q: What were the first English-language books you read? A: At first [studying English] was like a very intense program of physical training. A lot of it was just "repeat-after-me," but after two years I was able to read some books like Steinbeck, Charles Dickens. After the third year I realized I wanted to study American literature so at that time I began to work hard so I could do that. Q: Did you ever imagine at that time that you might be writing books in English, that you'd be on the New York Times Best-Seller list, and be getting awards for writing in English? A: No, I wasn't interested. (Laughs.) I wasn't interested. I just wanted to study American literature, and I wanted to be a scholar. Q: Why do you choose to write in English? Do you think of the books at first in Chinese and translate them into English as you write? A: I always conceive my works in English, except when I use dialogue and my characters speak Chinese. But the working process is in English. Q: Have you published writing in China too? A: Very, very little. I translate some articles into Chinese. Q: Does that make you feel isolated? A: Yes. I am not in any category. I am without a category. If I wrote in Chinese I couldn't have an audience at all. Other exiled writers have already established themselves in the mother tongue. I didn't publish enough in Chinese to have an audience. For me now to be a writer there is no other way but to write in English. Q: You describe a flock of chicks in "Waiting." You say "Beside the pigpen, a white hen was making go-go-go sounds to call a flock of chicks, the smallest of which was dragging a broken leg." This attention to detail really brings the scene alive. A: Sometimes, even when we write fiction, we have to try to ground the story. So when I want to describe the flock of chicks I want to also add the extraordinary or deformed part. And I often saw these chicks with broken legs. Q: There's the saying in Chinese about painting that goes "Hualong dianjing" which means something like "Dot the dragon's eye and it comes to life." I think that is what you are doing in passages like this. A: Thank you. That is what I try to do.

Faulkner & O'Connor

After two years of intensive language study he could read abridged versions of Dickens and Steinbeck and became interested in American literature. His father retired from the army and moved the family south, to his home province of Shandong. There Jin enrolled in a masters program in American literature. He was taught by visiting American Fulbright scholars who brought their own books with them.

For the first time, Jin was exposed to former National Book award-winning authors such as William Faulkner, who landed the fiction prize twice, in 1951 and 1955, and Flannery O'Connor, who won it in 1972. In 50 years, the only other Chinese American to win the National Book Award for fiction was Maxine Hong Kingston for "China Men" in 1981.

While Jin enjoyed reading Faulkner and Flannery and other American novelists, he never imagined he would one day follow in their footsteps. He wanted to be a scholar and a translator.

Instinct for Survival

Shortly after his marriage to a young mathematician, Jin was given the opportunity to pursue a scholarship at Brandeis University in 1985. He left his new wife behind and came to the U.S. to study for his Ph.D. For several years he and his wife lived apart until she managed to join him in the States in 1987. Upon graduating, his difficulty finding a job in academia pushed him into writing fiction.

"Since I had planned to return to China, all my graduate work and my dissertation were aimed at the mainland [Chinese] market, not the American job market. It was quite hard for me to find an academic job here. I had published a book of poems in English so I thought if I continued to publish some books in English I might find a job teaching creative writing. Basically it was an instinct for survival that forced me into writing."

Jin has now published two books of short stories, two volumes of poetry and two novels, and teaches English and creative writing at Emory University in Atlanta. When asked where he found the confidence to write literature in English he just laughed.

"There's a lot of trepidation and hard work. Sometimes one sentence can take two or a few days. It is a lot of work. I never ask people about how to phrase things. I don't know about confidence. It takes a lot of time and lot of anxiety."

A Fantasy Fades

His books until now have focused on a specific time and place in China, the Northeast of his childhood, in the 1960s and 1970s. He often writes about communes and officers in the Chinese military, but he insists none of it is autobiographical. Still, "Waiting" is based on a true story that his wife's parents told him.

Jin says that since he has not been back to China since 1985, he is finished writing about contemporary China.

"The next book will be different," he said. "In the beginning, when I started writing, I went to the Yanjing Library at Harvard and I was so impressed. I saw all the material, all the old magazines and books [about China], a lot of it now unavailable in China, and I thought I could write book after book for my whole life. Gradually I realized that was a fantasy and I had to write something closer to my heart. Writing from my American life is closer to my heart now."