The winner of the 1999 US National Book Award for Fiction, set in China during and after the Cultural Revolution. For more than seventeen years, Lin Kong, a devoted and ambitious doctor, has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in his traditional home village lives the humble, loyal wife his family chose for him years ago. Every summer, he returns to ask her for a divorce and every summer his compliant wife agrees but then backs out. This time, after eighteen years’ waiting, Lin promises it will be different.

“Let me tell you what really happened, the voice said. All those years you waited torpidly, like a sleepwalker, pulled and pushed about by others’ opinions, by external pressure, by your illusions, by the official rules you internalized. You were misled by your own frustration and passivity, believing that what you were not allowed to have was what your heart was destined to embrace.”

I can’t really say I liked this book.

TRIGGER WARNING: VIOLENT RAPE

I must say the title is very apt as the main character and the side characters are all waiting, all the time. Lin Kong is a wishy washy man, married to what he calls an ugly wife in the country side and while working in the city, he falls in love with Manna Wu. He wants to have sex with Manna Wu, but she, a woman of morals, wants to be married first.

Lin Kong goes back to the country side to divorce his wife but since she hasn’t been adulterous and has been taking care of their daughter and house, no judge would grant the divorce unless the wife agrees. And she refuses every single time. Lin Kong’s only way out is this odd rule that if you are separated for 18 years, the judge won’t listen to the wife and grant the divorce either way.

So Lin Kong and Manna Wu wait together for the 18 years to pass and when the divorce is finally granted, they are both in their 40s. They get married immediately after and have a set of twins when Manna Wu is 44.

Lin Kong is not happy again and misses the peaceful life he had with his previous wife and his daughter and during a drunken speech, he asks for his ex wife to take him back once Manna Wu dies as her heart is not the greatest and help him raise their two boys together.

The book ends with his daughter happily visiting him and the boys and passing along a message that the ex wifey will wait for him until he’s available again and Manna Wu laughing heartily and full of life (no end in sight for her!).

What an asshole this Lin Kong is. He himself admits he never really loved a woman passionately and was only the object of other people’s love. He doesn’t love Manna Wu (or has stopped loving her a while back) and is even happy to play matchmaker to her to either “pimp her off” to one of the higher generals or to one of his cousins back in his village who was looking for a woman to help raise his kids.

He never considers her feelings on the matter and is secretly happy when she refuses both matches. Manna Wu finds Lin Kong to be a sensitive man, delicate and full of inner thoughts. She does eye a more manly soldier man Geng Yang and wishes that Lin would be more burly like Geng was. Unfortunately her wishful thinking gets her in a bad situation where Geng Yang sexually assaults her and since she’s a woman, she can’t go to the higher ups in fears she will be shamed and not believed. After she confides of her assault to her best friend, she finds out she’s a gossip and everyone else has now find out and is mocking her as “used goods”. Lin also hears about it but is quiet and blames himself for telling Geng Yang that Manna Wu was a virgin and thus making him look at her sexually.

He couldn’t help imagining what this home would have been like if Manna and he had gotten married fifteen years earlier. At that time she had been such a pleasant woman that he had always believed he would be a happy man once he married her. But now she was so different and rather boring.

What I did like about the book was the depiction of village life in China in the 1960’s, how marriages worked, an honest look into the day to day life of people spanning over 2 decades. How people valued the yuan and 20 yuan alimony was considered generous by someone in the village but a laughing matter by someone in the city.

Shuyu, the ex-wife, was timid and kind and had bound feet in that traditional manner that men used to find attractive and now they were only considered an oddity, like a circus freak. I found it telling that when asked to show them, she protectively kept them away and said that they are a treasure, a golden lotus only to be enjoyed by the husband in private. When asked whether her husband, Lin, had seen them, she says no. — meaning he never saw her inner treasure or appreciated her feed in any way.

Other things I hated was how Lin, indecisive and weak, looks at his daughter as she’s growing up and wishes he could have been there for her more. Um… dude, you’re her dad, you made a choice.

Eh, if you want to read a book about a guy and his 18 year old affair (with no sex), this is the one for you. PS: there is an entire paragraph devoted to the marital relationship between Manna Wu and Lin once they got married and how frustrated she was with his lack of skill in the bedroom and his “3 minute” performance. This is why it’s good to try the goods before you buy them (or marry them!)

His heart began aching. It dawned on him that he had never loved a woman wholeheartedly and that he had always been the loved one. This must have been the reason why he knew so little about love and women. In other words, emotionally he hadn’t grown up. His instinct and ability to love passionately had withered away before they had had an opportunity to blossom. If only he had fallen in love soulfully just once in his life, even though it might have broken his heart, paralyzed his mind, made him live in a daze, bathed his face in tears, and drowned him in despair!

Yet one thing he was certain about now: between love and peace of mind he would choose the latter. He would prefer a peaceful home. What was better than a place where you could sit down comfortably, read a book, and have a good meal and an unbroken sleep? Deep in his heart he knew this was merely wishful thinking, because soon he would have to return to Manna and their babies in the other home. He closed his eyes. What a mess he had made of his life and the lives of others!”