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Essay 2 – A Free Life Units: 16,777
Mirjeta Ceraja Elmazi
1
Discuss the meaning(s) of ”a free life” in
Ha Jin’s novel
Essay 2 in Contemporary Transnational American Fiction
Mirjeta Ceraja Elmazi
Essay 2 – A Free Life Units: 16,777
Mirjeta Ceraja Elmazi
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Discuss the meaning(s) of ”a free life” in
Ha Jin’s novel
1. INTRODUCTION
The notion “of America as a place of freedom in which anyone can achieve success, realize
happiness, and attain a sense of home and belonging remains an important theme in Asian
American literature”
1
, and it very much remains an important theme in Ha Jin’s A Free Life.
This paper will focus on and discuss the different meanings of “a free life” (freedom) in Jin’s
novel by the same name. Firstly, however, we will take a closer look at the difference between
Chinese freedom and American freedom.
2. CHINESE FREEDOM AND AMERICAN FREEDOM
America. The land of the free: “No idea is more fundamental to Americans’ sense of
themselves as individuals and as a nation than freedom […] or liberty, with which it is almost
always used interchangeably”.
2
Whether it is the Declaration of Independence, which lists
freedom as one of the absolute rights of humankind, or the American Constitution, which is
committed to secure liberty, freedom and independence are at the core of American values.
The Civil War was fought for the new birth of freedom and independence (abolition of
slavery), World War II was fought for the Four Freedoms (freedom of speech, freedom of
worship, freedom of fear, and freedom of want), and the Cold War was fought to defend the
Free World
3
. Even immigrants and refugees arrived (and still do so) at the shores of the
United States, yearning to breathe free
4
.
Freedom in China, however, is a different story. Before the nineteenth century, there was no
word in the Chinese language for liberty or freedom, and the modern translation of liberty,
namely ziyou (self-determination), was coined in response to this new Western idea
5
. There is
a word for liberation in the Chinese Constitution, namely jiefang, but this word is solely used
regarding the liberation “of the Chinese nation from alien colonising and conquering powers,
and of the Communist state from Guomindang oppression”
6
, and does, accordingly, not
1
Ana, ”Feeling Asian/American: Ambivalent Attachments in Asian Diasporic Narratives”, 125.
2
Foner, “The Civil War and the Story of American Freedom”, 8.
3
Ibid.
4
Quote on the Statue of Liberty by Emma Lazarus: ”Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free”.
5
Kelly, “Approaching Chinese Freedom: A Study in Absolute and Relative Values”, 142-144.
6
Ibid., 143.
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correlate to the American/Western notion of freedom as a political and social concept.
Nevertheless, although there is no close equivalent for freedom in the classical Chinese
lexicon, “it would be mistaken to conclude that there was no notion of freedom or that it was
not considered important as a phenomenon.”
7
The idea of free and easy wandering, namely to
live according to one’s natural inclinations and wishes “without interference of people who
oppose what is natural”
8
, is also fundamental to Chinese tradition of Taoism/Daoism (a
philosophical/religious Chinese tradition focused on living in harmony with the Tao/Dao, i.e.
the way). Overall, whether one focuses on Taoism/Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism (a
system of ethical and social philosophy based on traditional Chinese societal principles and
values, termed by sociologist Robert Bellah as a “civil religion”
9
), or other popular Chinese
beliefs, “the centrality of ancestral worship in Chinese culture demonstrates the importance of
upholding the dignity of human beings.”
10
Chinese freedom, in its essence, consequently,
differs from the American/Western notion of freedom, as it is focused on internal spiritual
freedom rather than a right and privilege involving the state. This difference in freedom is
interesting in comparison to A Free Life, as we shall discover below.
3. DIFFERENT MEANINGS OF “A FREE LIFE” IN A FREE LIFE
Firstly, the concept of intellectual and literary freedom is extremely important for the main
character Nan Wu, something which he, due to censorship, cannot achieve in Communist
China, where a lot of Chinese literature was censored or denied publication: “In Toronto there
was also a group of novelists who […] were still writing in their mother tongue and sending
their works back to China for publication, but their manuscripts were often censored there or
rejected on the grounds that the subject matter wasn’t right.”
11
Also, if published, many,
including Nan, considered it “Communist propaganda”
12
. A prime example is Nan’s friend
Danning Meng, who works for the Beijing Writers’ Association after moving back to China
from the U.S., and whom Nan visits on his short trip to Beijing. Danning admits that, unlike in
America, he has “no real struggle for livelihood”
13
in China. Yet, Danning struggles as a writer:
“If you lived here, Nan, you’d have to forget about literature. The higher-ups want us to write
7
Lodén, “Human nature, freedom and dignity in China and Europe”, 38.
8
Ibid.
9
Berling, ”Confucianism.”
10
Lodén, “Human nature, freedom and dignity in China and Europe”, 39.
11
Jin, A Free Life, 421.
12
Ibid., 600.
13
Ibid., 532.
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about dead people and ancient events because this is a way to make us less subversive and more
inconsequential. It’s their means of containing China’s creative energy and talents.”
14
It thus
seems that language in China is used to limit creativity and freedom of thought. Nan, an
individual who was already once forced to abandon poetry by Chinese officials by being
“assigned to study” political science when admitting “to college back in China”
15
, is not willing
to abandon his literary freedom again, and true freedom for Nan, thus becomes aesthetic.
Language, more specifically English, is consequently seen as a tool of liberation for Nan, a
tool which makes him “unique” and “original”,
16
and which allows him to reach a broad,
international audience as well. English is not only liberating for Nan, however, but also for
Pingping, his wife: “She felt English was much more expressive and more useful. Back in China
she could hardly write anything, but here once she learned a little English, she had found
herself able to write a lot, as if whatever she put on paper became interesting.”
17
The notion of
being liberated by English is something the author of the novel, Jin, is familiar with as well: “I
was unpublished in my mother tongue, and if I wrote in Chinese, I might have to publish in
mainland China eventually and be at the mercy of its censorship. […] To preserve the integrity
of my work and to separate my existence from the power that be, I could not but write in
English.”
18
Obviously, a political power cannot “own” a language, but, in a sense, by censoring
and controlling all writing and publishing in China, the state does in fact take the Chinese
language hostage. From this perspective, the English language serves as freedom. On one
hand, this type of freedom is more American/Western than Chinese; on the other hand, it is
not. It seems that freedom, in Nan’s eyes, is being “a self-sufficient individual”
19
, meaning that
Nan can be free only when he answers to his spiritual needs (writing poetry), “unburdened by
external pressures”.
20
This, without a doubt, goes hand in hand with the traditional Chinese
notion of “free and easy wandering”, which appeals to the “individual’s freedom to behave and
develop in accordance with his or her individual characteristics.”
21
It does not, however, go
hand in hand with the censorship of Communist China.
14
Ibid.
15
Ibid., 17.
16
Ibid., 263.
17
Ibid., 502.
18
Jin, ”Exiled to English”, 94.
19
Jin, A Free Life, 306.
20
Zhang, ”Domination, Alienation and Freedom in Ha Jin’s Novels: A View from Afar”, 184.
21
Lodén, “Human nature, freedom and dignity in China and Europe”, 42.
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Another type of freedom Nan and Pingping achieve is economic and material freedom. To
begin with, economic freedom is what drives them both, and they work hard every single day
in their own restaurant to finally own their own house on their own land: “This is freedom,
[Nan] reasoned: not owning anybody a penny and having no fear of being fired.”
22
But his joy
is “short-lived”
23
. The fact that his struggles in America, as a first generation immigrant, has
ended so soon hurls Nan into deep despair, making him feel as if “the whole notion of the
American dream [is] shoddy, a hoax”
24
– such materialistic success is meant for the second
generation, not for Pingping and him: “In other words, the first generation was meant to be
wasted, or sacrificed, for its children.”
25
One could argue that his scepticism is based in the fact
that working hard to earn money does not equate success in Nan’s opinion, something he flags
very early on in the novel.
26
Instead, success for Nan is writing poetry, and even in poetry,
wealth is not the goal: “In spite of his own hard effort to make money, when it came to poetry
Nan couldn’t imagine it as a commodity.”
27
This also proves how idealistic and naïve Nan is
regarding poetry and the publishing industry. For him, poetry is an autonomous space. In
reality, however, as Dick Harrison, Nan’s poet friend, proves, if one wants to make a living and
survive off of poetry and literature, one has to perceive one’s talent and writings as products
to be sold
28
. Ultimately, Nan is interested in aesthetic freedom, not economic freedom. He even
turns down an offer, including a “big raise”,
29
to become the motel manager in the motel he
works at after selling their restaurant, in order to spend more time on literature and poetry,
and his son, Taotao. Yet, it should be noted that without owning the house and securing
himself and his family somewhat, and without working daily at a motel, Nan would not be
able to spend time or energy reading literature and writing poetry. Nevertheless, this is most
likely the kind of aesthetic freedom Nan hungers for: Free from both China’s censorship and
America’s materialism.
Nan’s urge to be self-sufficient leads us to the next point, namely the American dream.
People around the Wus seem to be praising America and the American dream for the Wus’
success, which, in a way, disregards how hard the Wus work daily to earn their “sweat
22
Jin, A Free Life, 417.
23
Ibid.
24
Ibid., 418.
25
Ibid.
26
Ibid., 41-42.
27
Ibid., 405.
28
Ibid.
29
Ibid., 617.
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money”.
30
Heidi Masefield, a friend of the Wus’, says at one point: “This can happen only in
America. I’m very moved by the fact that you and Nan have actualized your American dream
so quickly. I’m proud of this country.”
31
Nan, however, has grown sceptical at the version of
the American dream that is materialistic, and he even realises that it is “not something to be
realized but something to be pursued only.”
32
What kind of freedom do they in fact have in
America, if they are constantly worrying about economic freedom, paying their mortgage off,
and so forth? It seems as if the materialistic American dream brutalises life in the land of the
free. Gerald, their neighbour, is a good example of this. He is described as a “kind fellow and a
sort of craftsman, always ready to give a hand to someone”,
33
but “neither decent character
nor physical capability and skills guarantee survival in America.”
34
Gerald’s loss of his
property reflects a very real and plausible threat many mortgage-paying Americans face:
“Ownership of property is hard earned, and any misstep, be it mismanagement of money or in
Gerald’s case, an untimely divorce, may cost a person everything they own.”
35
America
promises equal opportunities to its citizens, yet “poor people”
36
, like the Wus and Gerald, are
left to fend for themselves, always in pursuit of economic freedom, whereas people, like Heidi,
of “Old New England money”
37
, are born into true American economic freedom. Furthermore,
the alienation that Gerald faces in the community before and after losing his house can also be
linked to the “antivictim political culture in US society”,
38
which “makes it impossible to
address issues such as injustice, inequality, and collective responsibility”
39
, since this culture
allows a stigmatised judgment of individuals, no longer allowing victims to rest on the
shoulders of injustices and injuries.
It is worth to mention, though, that Pingping’s economic freedom in America is very
different that the freedom she had in China. In China, Pingping had planned to “divorce Nan
[… and] raise their child by herself.”
40
In America, however, “she couldn’t live separately from
Nan [… and] she depended on him for many things”
41
. Whether Pingping felt freer in China
30
Ibid., 146 + 372 + 605.
31
Ibid., 389.
32
Ibid., 618.
33
Ibid., 359.
34
Zhang, ”Domination, Alienation and Freedom in Ha Jin’s Novels: A View from Afar”, 207.
35
Ibid.
36
Jin, A Free Life, 225.
37
Ibid., 41.
38
Shao, ”American Academic Freedom and Chinese Nationalism: An H-Asia Debate, 47.
39
Ibid.
40
Jin, A Free Life, 159.
41
Ibid., 158.
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than in America, because life in Communist China is cheaper than that in America, or because
she is surrounded by family and the familiar, the conclusion remains the same: In China, she
felt that she could survive on her own, but in America, both she and Taotao are dependent on
Nan.
On a final note, freedom from collective identity should be mentioned. If self-sufficiency
(which, in its essence, is individualisation) is important for Nan, he must separate himself
from the collective identity and collective mentality of Chinese people, because, ultimately,
“the nature of a people determines the nature of their government”
42
. Ha Jin touches upon this
issue himself in an interview: “it’s very hard for [the Chinese people] to think as individuals.
The country cannot be violated for the sake of the individual. […] For many decades religions
were banned and a lot of people developed religious feelings for the country.”
43
In a sense, Jin
“implies that it is the collective mentality of the Chinese people that enables their government
to have highly centralized power and no liability.”
44
Although Nan distances himself from the
collective Chinese mentality and “patriotic nonsense”
45
in political discussions throughout the
novel, and although he grows to perceive his revoked Chinese passport as an opportunity to
“become an independent man”
46
in America, the land of the free, he still continues to be
mesmerised by the nostalgia of Beina, which can be argued to reflect China in many ways,
throughout most of the novel. Only upon feeling “out of place”
47
during and after his visit to
China, and upon meeting Beina again shortly after his return to America, is his illusion of her,
and China, “shattered”
48
: All “the years’ longing and anguish had been caused by a mere
illusion […] But his disillusionment was perhaps necessary for him to sober up and begin to
heal.”
49
This is where Nan’s true detachment commences. He, thus, opens his heart to
Pingping, who can also be perceived as “the personification of a new life in the United
States”,
50
and he, hence, becomes a free man in many ways.
42
Ibid., 321.
43
Fay, ”Ha Jin, The Art of Fiction No. 202”.
44
Zhang, ”Domination, Alienation and Freedom in Ha Jin’s Novels: A View from Afar”, 191-192.
45
Jin, A Free Life, 96.
46
Ibid., 83.
47
Ibid., 573.
48
Ibid., 590.
49
Ibid.
50
Codeluppi, “Inner and Outer Resistance to China: The Pursuit of Freedom in A Free Life and The Dark Road”.
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4. CONCLUSION
Since A Free Life, as the title suggests, is grounded in freedom and living a free life, there are,
surely, more meanings of “a free life” to be discussed, but due to the lack of space, the
abovementioned examples will have to suffice.
As we have seen so far, Nan’s idea of freedom is both ill-placed in America and in China.
While Nan’s notion of aesthetic/literary freedom goes hand in hand with the traditional
Chinese concept of individual, natural freedom, it cannot be nurtured in Communist China,
and although America is the land of the free, with free speech and free press, it is also the land
of materialism, driving everything from the American dream to the publishing industry. On
the one hand, Nan does not want to be defined or censored by the Chinese state, but on the
other, he does not wish to be defined by American materialism either. Nan’s ultimate goal
thus becomes aesthetic freedom and freedom from the materialistic aspect of the American
dream. Yet, there is a conflict between his idealistic view of aesthetic freedom and the actual
economic reality of achieving said aesthetic freedom. Nevertheless, it could be argued, that the
ending suggests that Nan succeeds in becoming the type of free man he longs to become: He
reads literature, he writes poetry, and as he grows distant from China (Beina), he finally
begins acknowledging and appreciating his new, free life in America (Pingping). Whether the
naïve Nan would ever be able to achieve said aesthetic freedom without a sort of economic
freedom, however, is a discussion for another time.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ana, Jeffrey Santa. “Feeling Asian/American: Ambivalent Attachments in Asian Diasporic
Narratives.” In Racial Feelings: Asian America in a Capitalist Culture of Emotion, edited by
Jaffrey Santa Ana, 125-173. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015.
Berling, Judith A. “Confucianism.” Accessed December 16, 2018.
https://asiasociety.org/education/confucianism.
Codeluppi, Martina. “Inner and Outer Resistance to China: The Pursuit of Freedom in A Free
Life and The Dark Road.” TRANS-, no. 20 (October 2016).
https://journals.openedition.org/trans/1358.
Fay, Sarah. “Ha Jin, The Art of Fiction No. 202.” The Paris Review, issue 191, winter 2009.
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5991/ha-jin-the-art-of-fiction-no-202-ha-
jin.
Foner, Eric. “The Civil War and the Story of American Freedom.” Art Institute of Chicago
Museum Studies 27, no. 1 (2001): 8-25+100-101.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4102836.
Jin, Ha. A Free Life. New York: Vintage International, 2009. Kindle.
Jin, Ha. “Exiled to English.” In Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, edited by Shu-mei Shih,
Chien-hsin Tsai, and Brian Bernards, 93-98. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.
Kelly, David. “Approaching Chinese Freedom: A Study in Absolute and Relative Values.”
Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, no. 2 (2013): 141-165.
Lodén, Torbjörn. “Human nature, freedom and dignity in China and Europe.” International
Communication of Chinese Culture 1, no. 1-2 (December 2014): 35-45.
Shao, Qin. “American Academic Freedom and Chinese Nationalism: An H-Asia Debate.”
positions: east asia cultures critique 23, no. 1 (February 2015): 41-48.
Zhang, Emma Hongxuan. “Domination, Alienation and Freedom in Ha Jin’s Novels: A View
from Afar.” PhD diss., University of Hong Kong, 2015.
