Rating: 
Summary: A great book!
Review: well...i'm from mexico and i read this book and i just wanna tell you "it's great", it kept me readin' and readin' is a great and different history and a love novel where they have to fight against many things the protaginists are facing to be together, althought, at the end this history gave me a surprise...read it and you'll know what i'm talkin' 'bout
Rating:
Summary: Is patience a virtue?
Review: What makes this 20th century Chinese fable so memorable is its subtle portrayal of time. The portrayal of time's passage in a life we see as "not fully-lived" and marked by restraint, is told so elegantly and richly that moments lost to the characters are transformed into those which are the best lived, and truest (certainly the most innocent) of their lives.
It may strike readers as a fairy tale or fable for the ending, when the illusions that were bound up in the doctor's years of waiting for his sweetheart are unleashed. Then the reader must question the years he waited, following the law. What were they for? Was his commitment to a woman in the world or to waiting itself? The allure of the unattainable is perhaps a universal human weakness, but you cannot ask for a more beautiful portrayal of it than in this fine book. His epiphany on love at the end of the novel still does not ultimately change his character, one in which the act of waiting for something is almost his very own reflection.
Historically, this is an excellent portrayal of both interior life as it existed under Chinese communism, and the interference of public onto private life found in any society.
Rating:
Summary: What is a real waiting
Review: What's the main point of this book? Not until the last few pages did I recognize it. In this book, Ha Jin told us what was the real waiting¡XNeither Kong Lin's nor Manna's, But Shuyu's. As a silent and humble character, Shuyu was ¡§naturally¡¨ forgotten by most readers. However, only patient readers could enjoy the ecstasy finding the surprising ending Ha Jin tried to tell us after the long read. At this point this book was very beautiful and successful ¡V and sometimes a bit metaphorical, even philosophical --- hitting its climax, simultaneouly testing the readers and awarding those faithful. By design, we readers SHOULD wait patiently, waited for the ending. Impatient readers would never find the beauty and the true meaning of this story. In fact, since the pace of this book was so slow, the stories and scenerios during those 18 waiting years were repeated and predictable, I almost gave it up in the middle. But after I finished it, I was deeply moved and burst into tears. The book totally deserved it's reputation. BTW, Why "18" years? Chinese, and only Chinese, knew that. It refered to an ancient folk tale of China. A woman (WANG BAU-CHUAN) waited for her husband (SHUE PING-KWEI), an officer, for "18" years in a shack, not knowing her husband had another lover in the army. This tale was so famous that almost every Chinese knew it. So we knew that Ha Jin tried to write a modern Wang-Shue tale. Each main character in the "Waiting" had its own corresponding character in the Wang-Shue story. The only flaw in this book, in my opinion, was the chapter about Manna was raped. It read so cheap.
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