Ha Jin has said that, for a writer, the main problem of moving from China to the United States-apart from learning the language-is to see people as individuals rather than as members of a group.

As he walks back to his hotel, he sees, beyond its roof, a single star “flashing and glittering against a vast constellation.” At this moment, Tian feels like that star. Tian tells Yabin that he would like to accept but that, again, he has to get permission. Four thousand dollars! That is almost a quarter of Tian’s annual salary in China.

Once the two men are settled with their drinks, Yabin, who worked as an impresario in China and knows Tian’s value, offers him four thousand dollars to stay in New York a few extra days and sing at Taiwan’s National Day celebrations. Off Tian goes to have what Meng, who is responsible for seeing that all his singers are on the plane to Beijing the next day, clearly regards as an ill-advised get-together. “Meng’s heavy lidded eyes fixed on him, alarmed,” but eventually he says O.K. Could they go for a drink? Not without permission, as Tian knows, and so, like a schoolchild who needs a bathroom, Tian asks the troupe’s director, Meng, for leave to accept the invitation. After the final show-in New York’s huge Chinatown in Flushing-the troupe’s lead tenor, Yao Tian, is greeted by a man, Han Yabin, whom he knew in Beijing but who later left and ended up in New York. ISBN: 9780099287599 SKU: 1412818 Note: Any image shown is from a stock photo and is not the actual book.At the opening of Ha Jin’s new novel, “ A Song Everlasting” (Pantheon), a troupe of Chinese singers is finishing an American tour. This 2000 Vintage Paperback is in fair condition. This time, Lin promises, will be different.Tracing these lives through their summer of decision and beyond, Ha Jin vividly conjures the texture of daily life in a place where the demands of human longing must contend with the weight of centuries of wisdom. Every summer, his compliant wife agrees to a divorce but then backs out. In a culture in which the ancient ties of tradition and family still hold sway and where adultery discovered by the Party can ruin lves forever, Lin's passionate love is stretched ever more taut by the passing years. Every year he visits her in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce.

But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young. For more than seventeen years, Lin Kong, a devoted and ambitious doctor, has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Mannu Wu.

Waiting by Ha Jin