The Life of Revolutionary Soldiers: Ocean of Words by Ha Jin

Book Review
Ocean of Words by Ha Jin
Published in 1998 by Vintage International

These are the fictional stories of soldiers during the Sino-Russian border conflict in the late 1960s. Author Ha Jin was a soldier in the People's Liberation Army then, and this must be why his stories seem so authentic--not necessarily the actual content, but the mindset of characters. This is what is so enjoyable about Ha Jin's stories: each character is different and most have somewhat of an opportunistic if not dark side, somewhat similar to Jack London's writing. Add in the occasional satire, and there is little doubt that Ha Jin is a natural, or perhaps a learned (based on his experiences in Communist China) skeptic.

Here then, is a portion of a story from Ha Jin's Ocean of Words, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award.

"Our talk did not take long. He looked crestfallen and ashamed, but he denied there had been somebody else involved and insisted to me that a good man must accept the consequences of his own actions.
In a way, I appreciated his only blaming himself for the whoring. If another man like him was found in my platoon, I would have trouble clearing our name. People would chuckle and say the First Platoon had a whoring gang. That would give Liu Fu a hard time too, because he would surely be treated by the other men as a sort of traitor.
But I did take this case seriously, for I had to stop it. We stayed at the border to defend our country, and we must not lose our fighting spirit by chasing women. Unlike the Russians on the other side, we Chinese were revolutionary soldiers, and we could not rely on women to keep up our morale. Every Saturday night we saw from our watchtower the Russians having many college girls over in their barracks. They would sing and dance around bonfires, kiss and embrace in the open air, roll and fuck int he woods. They were barbarians and Revisionists, while we were Chinese and true Revolutionaries.
So I ordered Liu Fu to write out his self-criticism, examining the elements of bourgeois ideology in his brain and getting a clear understanding of the nature of his offense. He wept and begged me not to take disciplinary action against him. He was afraid his family would know it, and he would carry the stain for the rest of his life. I told him that a disciplinary action would have to be taken and that I was unable to help him with that. It was better to tell him the truth.
'So I'm done for?' His horsey eyes watched my mouth expectantly.
'Your case was sent down by the Regimental Political Department. You know our company cannot interfere with a decision from above. Usually, an offender like you is punished with a disciplinary action, but this doesn't mean you will have to carry it for the rest of your life. It depends on your own behavior. Say from now on you behave well in every way, you may have it taken out of your file when you are demobilized.'
He opened his big mouth , but he didn't say anything, as if he swallowed down some words that had been stuck in his throat. The word demobilized must have struck him hard, because a soldier like him from the countryside would work diligently in order to be promoted to officer's rank. It would be a misfortune to return to his poor home village, where no job waited for him; if he had no job, no girl would marry him. But with such a stigma in his record, Liu Fu's future in the army was fixed: He would never be an officer."