Ha Jin, who was born in Liaoning, China, in 1956, served in the People's Liberation Army for six years during the Cultural Revolution. A student of literature since his teens, Jin was studying at Brandeis University in the US during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. In an interview with the Paris Review Jin says that the Chinese government's harsh response in Tiananmen Square convinced him to stay in America. Jin's writing deals extensively with China, and the Chinese mindset, but he writes in English, which he says he feels is a more plastic language. His 1999 novel "Waiting," which earned him a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, tells the story of a Chinese army doctor who longs to leave his loveless arranged marriage but struggles with questions of duty. Today Jin teaches in the English department at Boston University.
