1.2 The Previous Study of Ha Jin

It is generally accepted that Ha Jin’s first novel Waiting has obtained a high valuation in American literature. More and more people are studying it from different perspectives.

Most people focus on the reflection of orientalism in Waiting (Liu Jun, 2003: 24-27). They hold the view that Ha Jin didn’t judge China with American value, and not fabricated to meet American market as some abroad Chinese writers did, his “story of Chinese People” are simple, clear and honest (Gao Yuanbao, 2005: 70-74).

Another popular topic is Ha Jin’s language style and features in Waiting (Zhang Yan, 2010: 71-75). Unlike other ESL writers, Ha Jin doesn’t try to use complex words and expressions in his fictions. Rather, he always chooses to use simple and short words to express his ideas. He transplants many typical Chinese symbols into English in his own way. The nativized lexis in his works caught a lot of researchers’ eyes (Li Jie, 2011: 92-93).

2 Writing Style of Ha Jin

Ha Jin’s short stories are often good choices to spare the time, with fierce irony and biting description. His novels, on the other hand, are more subtle to some extent, and in them the male protagonists usually find themselves in erratic situations, forced to act in a moral vacuum.

Ha Jin is influenced most by the great Russian writers of the nineteenth century—especially Gogol, Turgenev, and Chekhov. He counts Nabokov's Pnin among his five most influential books. It showed him that deliberately inaccurate and distorted English “could create a style that reflects the struggle of immigrants.” That style has now become Jin's own. He does not want to write standard American-English idioms. He wants something that sounds slightly foreign and absolutely accessible. Waiting evinces a certain Gogolian sensibility in their portrayal of the absurdities of bureaucratized life in China in the 1970s and 1980s, with the common citizen ever ensnared in the caprices and pettiness of controlling Party apparatchiks (Varsava, 2010) He never uses words just for playfulness. He does not think style just for style's sake is a good way of writing. The story is always more important than the style, and the style is secondary and is supposed to serve the story.来~自^751论+文.网www.751com.cn/

The writer shows a preference of using short words and sentences that are quick and powerful. His novels are easy for ESL readers to read because his language is simple and his writing flows smoothly. The most frequently used sentence patterns are “main clause + non-restrictive attributive clauses” and “non-finite verb clause + main clause”, especially in the descriptions of movement. The structures are favored by ESL readers, because they conform to the sentence patterns of Chinese logic. For example: 

For some reason a top general in Northeastern Military Command had issued orders in October that all the army had to be able to operate without modern vehicles, which not only were unreliable but also could soften the troops. (main clause + non-restrictive attributive clause)