Mo Yan, winner of Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012.
“Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition.”
From citation made with the award by the Swedish Academy.
“In writing about the darker aspects of society there is a danger that emotions and anger allow politics to suppress literature. A novelist must take a humanist stance as literature originates from events but transcends them.”
From Mo Yan’s acceptance speech in Stockholm at the Nobel Awards ceremony (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-12/09/content_15999293.htm).
His real name is Guan Moye, and his pen name, Mo Yan, means “don’t speak”. Coming from a family of poor farmers in a village in Northeast Gaomi Township, Shandong province, China, where most of his novels are set, he endured the hardships of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) working in a factory in a poor village and saw the chaotic rise of
China to a world power. His literary skills blossomed out while he was a soldier in the Peoples’ Liberation Army. These were recognized by the Chinese Army and he became a teacher of literature at the Army Cultural Academy and he later joined Beijing Normal University for formal education and obtained a Master’s in Literature. The most famous of
his 11 novels are: Falling Rain on a Spring Night (1981), Red Sorghum Clan (1987), The Garlic Ballads (1988), The Republic of Wine (1992), Big Breasts and Wide Hips (1996), Sandalwood Death (2004), Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (2006), Change (2010) and Pow (2013). He has produced hundreds of short stories.
China has an ancient historical tradition of producing great classic novels that are absorbing stories of everyday life and adventure, long before that of any other nation,
Eastern or Western. The modern novel as we know it can be seen in Chinese novels of the 13th century and later. Other nations, like ancient Greece, Rome and India have their grand mythical stories but these are not real life stories that a reader can readily relate to. In English literature we have a modern novel in Chaucer’s Pilgrims Progress of the 13th century. But none of these are comparable with the exciting story-telling found in the voluminous Chinese novels of the 13th – 19th centuries: Outlaws of the Marsh (by Luo
Guanzhong), Plum in the Golden Vase (?), Romance of the Three Kingdoms (by Luo
Guanzhong), Journey to the West (by Wu Chengen), Chronicle of the West Wing (by
Wang Shifu), In Search of Gods (by Gan Bao).
The Swedish Academy that chooses the Nobel Prize awards for literature has a long history of political bias, awarding many of its prizes to anti-communist activists in Eastern Europe
in the Soviet era and to two Chinese political agitators, one of whom is a refugee in France and the other in a Chinese prison. This is its first recognition of an outstanding Chinese literary giant of our times who is part of the Chinese establishment. However, Mo Yan’s writings are anything but what the Chinese establishment has wanted to project of life in China and his elevation to Vice President of the Chinese Writers’ Union reflects the new open society in China.
Big Breasts and Wide Hips
This is one of his great epic novels. Mo Yan is one of the most skilful story tellers of modern times and every page of this book holds the reader in suspense. Before the reader concludes that an episode is settled a new development alters the picture in a continuing flow of dramatic events of gains and reverses and changing fortunes.
The story is set in a village in North East Gaomi Township in Shandong Province, China, where the author himself was born. The story revolves around the life of a poverty-stricken peasant family living a primitive life in one of the most dramatic periods of Chinese history, from 1900 during the time of the Manchu emperors to around 1965, going through the periods of the upheavals of the Japanese invasions, the Nationalist-Communist wars, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution. It is a chaotic period of enormous tragedy, enormous sacrifice and suffering till the incubation period of present day China. Elements of these contending powers wash through Gaomi village leaving its tragic impact on the lives of the poor peasants whose traditional way of life is turned upside down. They live in alternating periods of murder and starvation and periods of some normalcy while the outsiders take control over their lives. The suffering reaches a height by 1965 when the insanity and the brutality of the Red Guards terrorises the
population with mass propaganda, mock trials and severe punishments. Then there
is a break of 15 years in the main story as the story teller, Jintong Shangguan, is sent to a prison labour camp where he toils in a salt production facility under harsh conditions. When he returns in 1980, the Chinese world has changed beyond recognition. Instead of being punished or even executed for being a rich peasant or a business owner, making money and becoming rich is now a virtue. Those who seize the opportunities and become rich have all the frailties of human beings: they live extravagantly with all the latest imported Western goods and social manners, they bribe officials for favours and
generally exploit the system for their personal benefit. The poor are still left behind while the conflicts within society for power and position continues under new rules. The story continues till 1992.
The long story is told through the experiences of the Shangguan family over this entire period. The heroine of the story is “Mother”, Shangguan Lu, born in 1900 and the other principal characters are her eight daughters. The Shangguan family is a matriarchal unit. At the beginning, the physically tough mother-in-law rules the family with violence against her husband, son and daughter-law-law. When Japanese forces kill the two men and
permanently cripple her, “Mother” becomes the head of the family. Mother is not
concerned with morality in the traditional sense or in politics or any other idealism. She is quintessentially human and her mission in life is to raise and preserve her family at all costs during these chaotic times while displaying a decency and kindness to others in defiance of the demands of the new political movements and the moral hazards they have created. Her suffering is life long. There are no other heroes: the real heroes are Mother and her daughters, all of whom eventually suffer after initial gains.
The technique used is the narration of the main story through the eyes of Mother’s only son, Jintong Shangguan. Jintong is a very weak and imperfect male with a fetish for female breasts and milk and an inability to eat normal food. He never grows up to be a man. He is physically weak, lacks mental stamina, is cowardly, sexually impotent and often survives through the help of the women he encounters who are somehow attracted to him for a while. He is an eternal loser and he often admits he is “useless”. He is an anti-hero, floating with the forces around him without participating in them, unlike his sisters, and suffering greatly from the mental and physical abuse he is subjected to. His sisters, on the other hand, are tough women who become involved in the political movements that sweep through the village and form liaisons with political leaders and the wider political spectrum is revealed through the fortunes and misfortunes of the family sisters and their
offspring.
It must take great courage to tell such a tale in China or for that matter in any country in the world. While official histories document the heroic movements that marked the birth of a new nation, this long episodic tale reveals the tragedy and the dark side of such movements. It encompasses the periods of Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution when millions lost their lives out of starvation and brutality and finally the
new China with its economic success and the shortcomings that accompany this success. As seen by the villagers, the story makes no mention of any political leader or any political programme, only their tragic impact on the people’s lives. Without moralising, it illustrates that good and bad are a part of human societies.
Kenneth Abeywickrama
13 December 2012