The Bridegroom

Guhan is a husband and father of two who goes to nearby Taifu City on a business trip in “Alive.” Though Guhan hopes for a promotion, he is not an egotistical or power-hungry individual. Rather, the reason Guhan hopes for a promotion is largely altruistic: He hopes to provide a better apartment for his son, and hopes to be able to find a job for his daughter in Muji City. While in Taifu City, however, an earthquake causes Guhan to lose his memory. This does not so much change Guhan’s character, but wipes it out completely for a period. In the story’s middle, Guhan can’t recall his own name, and scarcely says more than the word “apple.” Slowly, Guhan recovers the ability to function and speak, and some of his altruistic qualities come to the fore again. In time, he is able to gain the trust of his adopted son, Mo.

When Guhan’s memory returns and he recalls his original family, Guhan must make a wrenching moral decision from which he will not recover by the story’s end. Seen from one point of view, Guhan’s abandoning his adoptive family without a word of warning or farewell might make Guhan seem cold-hearted and cruel. Yet seen from another point of view, Guhan’s decision to return to his original family—despite the relatively peaceful life he had made with his adopted one—makes him a virtuous and loyal man. This moral split in Guhan’s character appears in the metaphor of the earthquake that ruptures Taifu City in the story’s middle. 

Huping is a young actor who loses his mind while fighting a tiger, in “A Tiger-Fighter Is Hard to Find.” At the story’s beginning, Huping is talented, charming, attractive, physically fit, and brave. The narrator tells a story in which criminals once confronted Huping and he single-handedly beat them down, even taking their leader to the police station himself. Huping also was an award-winning actor.

The Huping at the beginning of the story, however, contrasts sharply with the man who Huping becomes after confronting the tiger. In the first take of the tiger-fighting scene, Huping performs well enough, only to appear arrogant and unhinged once the take is over. He shortly thereafter receives a mild schizophrenia diagnosis. After a second take, Huping reverts to a child-like state in which he wets himself and cries for help. At the third take, Huping becomes uncontrollably violent, appearing at one point intent on killing another actor. At the story’s end, Huping is in a mental hospital, thinking that he is an authentic tiger-fighter.

In all of the stories of The Bridegroom, it is perhaps Huping who undergoes the most dramatic change of character. Though in one sense, Huping could be affected by Director Yu’s dangerous ambition for perfection in shooting the scene, in another, Huping’s behavior is enigmatic. 

Manjin is a young male employee at the Muji Railroad Company in “Broken.” At the beginning of the story, Manjin’s primary motivation is to advance in his career in the Youth League Section of the Company. For this reason, he practices his handwriting in the offices after dinner one evening. Manjin is soon swept away by the course of events, though, when Bofan and others ask him to be part of an investigation that looks to catch two colleagues in the act of adultery. When they catch the adulterers, Manjin take notes during the interrogations. This is less a direct reflection on Manjin’s character and personal predilections than it is a demonstration of the ways that someone like Manjin might find themselves involved in the mechanisms of the Chinese authoritative police state.

There is evidence that Manjin remains a morally upright individual. His roommates press him for details about the case of adultery, but Manjin refuses to give any. Where Manjin’s identity and uniqueness as a character becomes evident however, is in his relationship to Tingting. While many of the other men at the Railroad Company fawn over Tingting, Manjin thinks she is “too flimsy, coquettish, and expensive, like a gorgeous vase only good for viewing” (72). In the final act of the story, however, Manjin contradicts his own assessment of Tingting by going to sleep with her panties under his pillow. In the end, it is unclear if Manjin is as innocent and passive in Tingting’s persecutions and ultimate death as he initially seems.  

Mr. Cheng is the narrator of the story, “The Bridegroom.” Though Mr. Cheng is a decent man who wishes for the best for his adopted daughter, his holds narrow views on homosexuality, and when his son-in-law, Baowen, faces charges of homosexuality, Mr. Cheng feels angered, disgusted, and curious, all at once. Mr. Cheng’s anger comes from the fact that he judges his daughter-in-law Beina’s marriage with Baowen to be illegitimate, since Baowen and she do not go to bed together. What’s more, he worries that Baowen’s homosexuality will make Beina the brunt of local gossip. At the end of the story, Mr. Cheng’s desire that Beina divorce Baowen expresses both his anger and his hope that Beina might go on to have a “normal” marriage and life.

When Baowen admits to Mr. Cheng that he likes another man, Mr. Cheng calls Baowen “sick” (97). While from some contemporary points of view, this might make Mr. Cheng seem like a bigot, part of the function of “The Bridegroom” is to demonstrate the way in which such concepts surrounding homosexuality are prevalent at the societal level, and not necessarily the provenance of individually bigoted men. Indeed, the fact that Mr. Cheng fights for Baowen’s well-being in the hospital goes to show how Mr. Cheng is simultaneously a civil person watching out for his family and a narrow-minded, biased person. 

Mr. Fang is an English professor in his late 50s at Muji Teachers College in the story “An Official Reply.” His career has many ups and downs: He publishes critically acclaimed fiction, finds himself accused of sexual indiscretions, starts a successful journal, and ultimately has his high-ranking position stripped from him after an embarrassment at an academic panel. Mr. Fang is at turns grandiose, arrogant, despairing, and regretful. Though the narrator says that Mr. Fang’s English pronunciation is imperfect, Mr. Fang rise to a vice chairmanship within the department. In the end, Mr. Fang is full of contradictions.

The narrator of “An Official Reply” supplies a total moral assessment at the end of the story. He says of Mr. Fang that he is a man of boundless energy and enthusiasm, and that he could be useful as a faculty member of a college, so long as one does not make the mistake of trusting him. Seen in this light, Mr. Fang might be seen as both talented (as suggested by his successful journal, his fiction publication, and his vice-chairmanship) and selfish and self-serving (as demonstrated by his embarrassment at the academic panel in the United States and sexual improprieties). The unifying factor in all of these traits and actions is Mr. Fang’s ambition. In this way, he is similar to Director Yu in “A Tiger-Fighter Is Hard to Find.”