Photo: slowking4 / GFDL 1.2 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Ha Jin is the kind of writer I admire without reservation. Leaving China and choosing to write in English, then winning the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner not once but twice, reflects a discipline that genuinely humbles me. Picking the pen name 'Ha' from Harbin, the city he loved, tells you he's a man attached to place and memory. Few things are harder than earning literary honors in a second language, and his roots in the Misty Poetry movement suggest a real obsession with the texture of words. I prefer quiet, weighty work to spectacle, and he delivers exactly that.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Ha Jin
- Name (Japanese)
- ハ・ジン
- Reading
- は・じん
- Born
- February 21, 1956 (age 70)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Pisces / Monkey
- Origin
- Jinzhou, People's Republic of China
- Occupation
- poet / short story writer / novelist / university teacher / writer
2. Background
- University
- Heilongjiang University
Awards & achievements
- 1999 Guggenheim Fellowship
- 1999 National Book Award
- 2005 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
- 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
- 1997 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
- 2001 Asian American Literary Awards
- 2008 Berlin Prize
- 2008 Great Immigrants Award
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
- Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%8F%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B8%E3%83%B3
Frequently asked questions
When was Ha Jin born?
Born February 21, 1956 (age 70).
Where is Ha Jin from?
Ha Jin is from Jinzhou, People's Republic of China.
What does Ha Jin do?
Ha Jin works as poet, short story writer, novelist, university teacher, writer.
Poet — see all → · Short story writer — see all → · More people from People's Republic of China →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.