The China depicted in The Bridegroom, Ha Jin's concise and multifaceted cycle of short stories, stands at the crossroads between capitalism and communism, where the promise of prosperity for ordinary people has been twisted into new forms of governmental tyranny. Jin, who immigrated to America in 1985 and wrote the 1999 National Book Award winner Waiting, has special insight into the confusion and injustice that result when two opposing value systems collide. Roughly progressing toward China's American-influenced market reforms, the 12 stories in The Bridegroom take place in Muji City, a small provincial locale near the oppressive industrial center of Harbin. Jin deliberately focuses on average citizens with simple needs, some of whom have nominal power in the workplace, though none enjoy positions of any real authority. Their ambitions are modest and universal: to hold a steady job at a decent wage, to be provided with an acceptable living space, and to secure a good future for their families. But at every turn, they run up against government bureaucracy, police brutality, blatant injustice, and other forces that limit their freedoms and alter their lives in harrowing ways. In the first story, "Saboteur," a university professor and his new wife enjoy a casual lunch at a train station until an officer throws a bowl of tea at their feet. The professor asks for an apology, but instead is thrown in jail for disrupting public order and subsequently beaten for refusing to confess the crime. Bruised and sick, he's eventually released, but Jin's butterfly-flaps-its-wings coda has 800 people diagnosed with the acute hepatitis he contracted during his stay. Arbitrary shows of violence also affect another upstanding young man in the title story, which concerns a marriage of convenience between a homosexual and an unattractive woman who values him for his loyalty and steady temperament. When the authorities catch him engaging in the illegal sex act, he winds up sentenced to a mental institution until cured. The cruel irony of his situation is that doctors believe homosexuality to be incurable, making his stay indefinite, yet not excusing him from a hospital policy that subjects him to excruciating "electric baths" on a daily basis. Even seemingly benign social measures have consequences: In the most affecting story of the cycle, "Alive," a massive earthquake prompts a "Form New Families" program which pairs bereft adult survivors into husbands and wives, then forces them to adopt dependent children and elderly people. When an amnesia victim comes to, he's struck by the horrifying realization that he has families in two different cities. The Bridegroom closes with illuminating stories about China's growing pains in adjusting to American influences, from corrupt values ("The Woman From New York") to fast-food institutions ("After Cowboy Chicken Came To Town"). An outsider of sorts to both countries, Jin has enough distance to examine the contradictions facing the new China, scoring points through sharply defined characters whose basic needs and desires are easily accessed. His eloquent and humane stories suggest he's only just begun an ongoing examination of his homeland, and of the taxing challenges that lie ahead.