Student Question
What motivates Aina to reconnect with her former teacher, Zhu Wenli, in "Decade" by Ha Jin?
Quick answer:
It is Aina's returning after a decade that prompts her to seek out Zhu Wenli. Aina feels guilty in "A Decade" because a misunderstanding ended with her teacher being arrested and brought to a forced labor camp. One of the themes is the effect of time passing, and it has been over ten years since Aina has returned to the place where her elementary school is.
"The Decade" is one of several short stories in Ha Jin's anthology Under The Red Flag. The stories take place during China's Cultural Revolution, beginning in 1966 and ending in 1976. Throughout this time, the youth of China were encouraged to rise up and destroy the "old" parts of China; the old culture, old ideas, old habits, and more. Zhu Wenli, a teacher at Aina's school, was in trouble quite frequently. She was caught singing a folk song when she was supposed to teach the children revolutionary songs sanctioned by Mao Zedong, and she was also caught in a sexually compromising situation with another teacher, Miao Jian.
Zhu Wenli's most serious trouble came when she was teaching the students about a writing of Mao's. She talks to the children about his use of a metaphor , and in her explanation she seems to disagree with Mao. A week later,...
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she is sent to the countryside to work in a forced labor camp. At the time, Aina doesn't care:
At that time I didn't care where she went; wherever she was sent, it seemed to me that she deserved it. Besides, there were so many people being reformed through labor that Wenli's leaving was almost a natural thing.
When Aina returns a decade later, she feels guilty and wants Zhu Wenli to know that she has not forgotten her. Her aunt tells her that she is a strong woman now; she returned from the countryside a "free person." When Aina finally sees Zhu Wenli, she is completely changed. She was once soft and delicate, but now she is stern, hardened, and even cold. She is completely unrecognizable, and Aina cannot bear how changed she is and decides she does not want to see her.
Indeed she looked very strong, as Aunt had told me, but she was no longer the person I wanted to meet.
Aina realizes that, in the past decade, the soft-spoken, kind Zhu Wenli she once knew has gone forever. It is also worth noting that the Cultural Revolution took place over the course of a decade, so Ha Jin may be nodding to how drastically a country, and a person like Aina herself or Zhu Wenli, can change over that period of time.