Bridgeroom-Ha Jin

The satire in this short story is not as easily understood as in the previous short story. Honestly I don't see much satire at all, I do see some humorous parts in the story. However the satire I do catch in this story goes back to how narrow sided the Chinese people are when it comes to things such as homosexuality. I'm not saying it is their own fault but more so the Chinese governement's fault. Basically the story is how a very handsome man marries a somewhat non-attractive women, and, and how the bride's adoptive father is constantly thinking about how their marriage will fail. There is some light of hope when the couple gets married after a short while, yet after about a year of marriage they still havent had sex and it seems the interest is being lost. The reason for this is because Baowen is gay. He has no desire really for women, and at first to me seems to be mainly just curious but then faces the fact he really does have feelings for other men. However, his homosexuality ends up putting him in jail, due to the fact that this is a crime punishable by jailtime in China. This story has much more meaning behind it than one may think, it really makes the reader think to themselves, how ignorant they may be about gays, or how ignorant they may be about being gay themselves. A prime example of ignorance over homosexuality in this story is, when Chief Miao says,"Homosexuality is “a social disease” and that it “originated in western Capitalism and bourgeois lifestyle." Here is a great example of how and what they think sexuality is, that it is western civilization that created this. However it is not only the people of China who are straight that are ignorant it seems to Baowen himself is almost just as ignorant. “Years ago I tried everything to cure myself. I took a lot of herbs and boluses, and even ate baked scorpions, lizards, and toads. Nothing helped me. Still I’m fond of men”, its just like why would he ever think that insects and toads would cure something, especially something as abstract as homosexuality, that is pretty funny.
This short story is a great example of how ignorance can really control they way a certain people think about one another. Chinese people are ignorant and dont want to believe that homosexuality is what it is a choice basically, however we have a lot of those types of people in America as well. One thing that is changing with newer generations is that more and more people are accepting people's homosexuality. This story does end up showing some signs of satire however not really the satire I was looking for, this story disappointed me overall but I still liked the previous short story from Ha Jin.