Mo Yan was born in February 1955 into a peasant family in Ping'an Village, Gaomi Township, northeast ofShandong Province, the People's Republic of China. He is the youngest of four children with two older brothers and an older sister.[8] His family was of an upper-middle peasant class background.[9] Mo was 11 years old when theCultural Revolution was launched, at which time he left school to work as a farmer. In the autumn of 1973, he began work at the cotton oil processing factory. During this period, which coincided with a succession of political campaigns from theGreat Leap Forward to theCultural Revolution, his access to literature was largely limited to novels in thesocialist realist style under Mao Zedong, which centred largely on the themes of class struggle and conflict.[10]
At the close of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, Mo enlisted in thePeople's Liberation Army (PLA),[11] and began writing while he was still a soldier. During this post-Revolution era when he emerged as a writer, both the lyrical and epic works of Chinese literature, as well as translations of foreign authors such asWilliam Faulkner andGabriel García Márquez, would make an impact on his works.[12]
In 1984, he received a literary award from thePLA Magazine, and the same year began attending thePeople's Liberation Army Arts College, where he first adopted the pen name of Mo Yan.[13] He published his first novella,A Transparent Radish, in 1984, and releasedRed Sorghum in 1986, launching his career as a nationally recognized novelist.[13] In 1991, he graduated from the joint master's program in literature by theLu Xun School of Literature andBeijing Normal University.[11]
Mo Yan was among a group of 100 artists who celebrated the 75th Anniversary of theYan'an Talks in 2012 by hand copying the text of the talks.[14]: 58 In 2012, Mo Yan received theNobel Prize in Literature.[15]: 184 Upon his receipt of the Nobel Prize later that year, some Chinese writers and artists criticized him for being too close to the Chinese government, which takes a strong role in cultural affairs.[16] Mo stated that he had no regrets for participating in the Yan'an Talks celebration.[14]: 58
Mo was also criticised by the authorSalman Rushdie in 2012 after the announcement of theNobel win, who called him a "patsy of the regime", after he refused to sign a petition calling for the freedom ofLiu Xiaobo,[17] a dissident involved in campaigns to end one party rule in China and the first Chinese citizen to be awarded theNobel Peace Prize in 2010.[18] Mo later suggested in a press conference inStockholm, Sweden, that he would not join the appeal calling for the release ofLiu Xiaobo from jail, although he hoped that Liu would be set free soon and had defended censorship as something equivalent to airport security checks.[19] According to Mo, censorship should not stand in the way of truth, but defamation or rumors should be censored.[19]
Mo Yan began his career as a writer in thereform and opening up period, publishing dozens of short stories and novels in Chinese. His first published short story was "Falling Rain on a Spring Night", published in September 1981.[20]
In 1986, the five parts that formed his first novel,Red Sorghum (1987), were published serially. It is a non-chronological novel about the generations of a Shandong family between 1923 and 1976. The author deals with upheavals in Chinese history such as theSecond Sino-Japanese War, theChinese Communist Revolution, and theCultural Revolution, but in an unconventional way; for example from the point of view of the invading Japanese soldiers.[21]
His second novel,The Garlic Ballads, is based on a true story of when the farmers of Gaomi Township rioted against a government that would not buy its crops.The Republic of Wine is a satire around gastronomy and alcohol, which usescannibalism as a metaphor for Chinese self-destruction, following Lu Xun.[21]Big Breasts & Wide Hips deals with female bodies, from a grandmother whose breasts are shattered by Japanese bullets, to a festival where one of the child characters, Shangguan Jintong, blesses each woman of his town by stroking her breasts.[22] The book was controversial in China because someleftist critics objected toBig Breasts' perceived negative portrayal of Communist soldiers.[22]
Mo Yan wroteLife and Death Are Wearing Me Out in 42 days.[5] He composed the more than 500,000 characters contained in the original manuscript on traditional Chinese paper using only ink and a writing brush. He prefers writing his novels by hand rather than by typing using apinyininput method, because the latter method "limits your vocabulary".[5]Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out is a meta-fiction about the story of a landlord who is reincarnated in the form of various animals during the Chineseland reform movement.[13] The landlord observes and satirizes Communist society, such as when he (as a donkey) forces two mules to share food with him, because "[in] the age of communism ... mine is yours and yours is mine."[23]
Pow!, Mo Yan's first work to be translated into English after receiving the Nobel Prize, is about a young storytelling boy named Luo who was famous in his village for eating so much meat.[24] His village is so carnivorous it is an obsession that leads to corruption.[25]Pow! cemented his writing style as “hallucinatory realism”.[26] Another one of his works,Frog, Yan's latest novel published, focuses on the cause and consequences of China'sone-child policy. Set in a small rural Chinese town called Gaomi, the narrator Tadpole tells the story of his aunt Gugu, who once was a hero for delivering life into the world as a midwife, and now takes away life as an abortion provider.[27]Steven Moore from theWashington Post wrote, "another display of Mo Yan's attractively daring approach to fiction. The Nobel committee chose wisely."[28]
Mo Yan's works areepic historical novels characterized byhallucinatory realism and containing elements ofblack humour.[23] The Nobel Prize Committee which awarded him the 2012 Nobel Prize in literature described his hallucinatory realism as combining "folk tales, history, and the contemporary."[15]: 184 His language is distinguished by his imaginative use of colour expressions.[7] A major theme in Mo Yan's works is the constancy of human greed and corruption, despite the influence of ideology.[21] Using dazzling, complex, and often graphically violent images, he sets many of his stories near his hometown, Northeast Gaomi Township in Shandong province.
Mo Yan's works are also predominantly social commentary, and he is strongly influenced by themagical realism ofGabriel García Márquez[15]: 184–185 and thesocial realism ofLu Xun. Mo Yan says he realised that he could make "[my] family, [the] people I'm familiar with, the villagers" his characters after readingWilliam Faulkner'sThe Sound and the Fury.[5] He satirizes the genre ofsocialist realism by placing workers and bureaucrats into absurd situations.[23] In terms of traditional Chinese literature, he is deeply inspired by the folklore-based classical epic novelWater Margin.[29] He citesJourney to the West andDream of the Red Chamber as formative influences.[5] Mo Yan's writing style has also been influenced by theSix Dynasties,chuanqi, notebook novels of theMing andQing dynasties and especially by folk oral literature. His creation combines all of these inspirations into one of the most distinctive voices inworld literature.[30]
Mo Yan's ability to convey traditionalist values inside of his mythical realism writing style inThe Old Gun has allowed insight and view into the swift modernization of China. This short story by Mo Yan was an exemplary example of theXungen movement Chinese literary movement and influenced many to turn back to traditional values. This movement portrayed the fear of loss of cultural identity due to the swift modernization of China in the 1980s.[31] Mo Yan reads foreign authors in translation and strongly advocates the reading of world literature.[32] At a speech to open the 2009Frankfurt Book Fair, he discussedGoethe's idea of "world literature", stating that "literature can overcome the barriers that separate countries and nations".[33]
Mo Yan's writing is characterised by the blurring of distinctions between "past and present, dead and living, as well as good and bad".[22] Mo Yan appears in his novels as a semi-autobiographical character who retells and modifies the author's other stories.[13] His female characters often fail to observe traditionalgender roles, such as the mother of the Shangguan family inBig Breasts & Wide Hips, who, failing to bear her husband any sons, instead is an adulterer, becoming pregnant with girls by a Swedish missionary and a Japanese soldier, among others. Male power is also portrayed cynically inBig Breasts & Wide Hips, and there is only one male hero in the novel.[22]
"Mo Yan" – "don't speak" in Chinese – is his pen name.[34] Mo Yan has explained on occasion that the name comes from a warning from his father and mother not to speak his mind while outside, because of China's revolutionary political situation from the 1950s, when he grew up.[5] It also relates to the subject matter of Mo Yan's writings, which reinterpret Chinese political and sexual history.[23]
In an interview with Professor David Wang, Mo Yan stated that he changed his "official name" to Mo Yan because he could not receive royalties under the pen name.[35]
《生死疲劳》Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (2006). The novel chronicles life in a village fromland reform to contemporary China, paralleling the protagonist's incarnations from human to animal forms.[15]: 193
^abcdWilliford, James (January–February 2011)."Mo Yan 101".Humanities.32 (1): 10.
^abcYi, Guolin (2024). "From "Seven Speak-Nots" to "Media Surnamed Party": Media in China from 2012 to 2022". In Fang, Qiang; Li, Xiaobing (eds.).China under Xi Jinping: A New Assessment.Leiden University Press.ISBN9789087284411.
^abcdChan, Shelley W. (Summer 2000). "From Fatherland to Motherland: On Mo Yan's 'Red Sorghum' and 'Big Breasts and Full Hips'".World Literature Today.74 (3):495–501.doi:10.2307/40155815.JSTOR40155815.
^SW12X - ChinaX (18 February 2015)."ChinaX: Introducing Mo Yan".Archived from the original on 22 December 2021. Retrieved7 November 2018 – via YouTube.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
