"Waiting" by Ha Jin

I read a good book after a very long time. This is a story set in mainland China during Mao's Cultural Revolution; about a sincere, studious doctor, who is trapped in a loveless marriage & waits for 18 long years for his divorce to be granted, so that he could finally be with the woman he loves. It sounds like a simple plot, but is quite nicely written; sort of a political parellel to the entire generation of Chinese youth of the time who were raised to be too patient to speak up for what was right; too rules-bound to know how to live without them; too passive to create change for themselves; while an opportunistic few prospered at their expense.

A friend of mine (she was my Mandarin tutor actually, but since I've discontinued my lessons she's just a friend now); lived in Beijing through the Cultural Revolution in the 70s; & told me a lot of stories & personal accounts from those times. At the time, I thought it incredible; I still do; the stories of how all religious buildings were destroyed, how capitalist books were confiscated, how school children grew up parroting Mao's poetry & writings, how ancient Chinese festivals & customs & knowledge were lost forever in mainland China after they were banned during the Cultural Revolution. That was my first introduction to the bizzare events that happened in China.

Then I came across this book, which makes a beautifully told argument for individualism (as against the collective society) layered beneath a painful love story. And how it takes a certain kind of people to make a society, like the communist China in the 60s & 70s, work.