A Map of Betrayal

Ha Jin's ``A Map of Betrayal'' garnered 3.8 out 5 on goodread, less than

stellar, but I did not read their reviews. Neither did I care about ornate

styles. Simple prose that narrates a plausible plot was just fine. More

important to me, a fellow Chinese expat more than one generation younger than

the author, was that I could relate to his stories. I picked up the book from

the library and finished it in one weekend.

 

The life of a communist mole, Gary Shang, in the CIA and the tale of his

America-born daughter, Lilian, connecting with her father's other family in his

native land form the two parallel storylines of the 280-page novel.

 

Gary left his wife and parents in Shangdong and followed the Americans as a

translator since 1949 from Shanghai to Okinawa and then to the States where he

settled, married again, and raised a daughter before being exposed and commiting

suicide in jail in 1980.

 

Teaching Asian American History for one semester in Beijing, Lilian traced the

descendants of his father and his first wife. Upon returning to the States, she

met with her newphew, Ben, a businessman and Chinese spy on the East Coast, and

was able to persuade him to choose freedom.

 

Every novelist is a moralist, I have heard. The author obviously embraces

American values, especially its idea of the relationship between the state and

the individual. He has Lilian saying to Ben: ``It's unreasonable to deify a

country and it's insane to let it lord over you. We must ask this question: On

what basis should a country be raised above the citizens who created it?''

 

Ben was in his twenties but some seasoned Chinese official may respond: ``A

country is nothing but a story made up to foster collaboration among its

citizens, to better protect themselves, for example. It is at once a goddess

that bestows blessings and a monster that exacts sacrifice. (Is there an

exception?) It is thus deified just as all the gods and Gods. From this point of

view, the individual's rights against the state can be a way of saying: `I want

the safety and glory for which someone else spills their guts.'''

 

 

Gary failed to convince the court that he was a patriot of both countries. Ha

Jin might thought of himself such a patriot, although he seems to have no

illusion that, when push comes to shove, such an individual is pardoned by

neither, just as Gary was convicted in the States and forsaken by China.

 

 

While the author did not demonize China, it is hard to find a page in the 2014

novel where he praises its cultural strengths that have contributed to its

staying power. Lilian could not stomach the salmon fillet in a Shangdong

restaurant because its cheap price suggested that the fish was raised in

polluted water and full of antibiotics yet she failed to mention that her

store-bought dumplings on Ben's first visit to her Maryland home were likely

stuffed with fillings of industrial pork and shrimp.

 

The sentences could be shorter to help the reader, Gary's playing a hand in

every major Sino-American affair through three eventful decades felt repetitive,

and Lilian, a history professor who had taught altogether two terms in Beijing

decades apart (the first was in 1988), seemed remarkably with-it on her

ancestral land and quick to judge.