【103-2 第二名】應外二 李〇萫：A Good Fall by Ha Jin

A Good Fall by Ha Jin

參賽者：李〇萫（應外二）
名次：第二名
書名：A Good Fall by Ha Jin
得獎作品：

     With the view of a novelist and the author’s description, I experience how the immigrants from China live in New York and the bright side as well as the dark side in humanity while people are struggling in their lives. This is not merely a collection of short stories, but a great painting of the floating world.

     Some of these stories seem to originate from regular news events, but they are filled with more different colors. They are ingeniously transformed into kind of eternal literatures which are interweaved with sweet smiles as well as bitter tears. Whenever those Chinese immigrants suffer losses or gain advantages, their desires for relying on the tradition in their motherland slightly agitate at the same time. Therefore, besides the extraordinary story in ordinary life, I also perceive the incomprehensible contradiction of human nature.

     Usually, the poverty, inequality, suspicion, oppression, and turmoil make people lose confidences in their motherland, and keep hopeful expectations for other countries. For the characters in this book, America is a perfect heaven in their minds. However, living as expatriate is not as simple and fine as how they imaged before since it is also a kind of suffering struggling. After all, to exist is just like striking a balance between gratification and melancholy, no matter where people live in. Especially for immigrant life, people pull out their roots in their motherlands and start from zero in other places, so it is obvious that their beautiful dreams with lacking understanding lead them to another hardship.

     It is special for me to read Chinese stories with English, and I think this great work might be particularly meaningful to the author. The author considered that nostalgia was a nonsense emotion before because he thought that people had to face the reality at the present time and just went ahead. However, he is getting old nowadays, and he realizes something different about nostalgia, and sometimes he indeed misses his home a lot.

     Many people long for exotic culture and even hold blind worship of foreign goods and ideas. Nevertheless, people will eventually realize that no matter how far and how long people leave, the firm roots will always keep them and their home in touch forever.