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MO YAN¹S EXPLOSIVE NOBEL
By Anna Schonberg
Stanford M.A in East Asian Studies
The Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Chinese writer Mo Yan has created such uproar that the merits of his writing have hardly been considered. Taking center stage are cries about the political implications of honoring a member of the Communist Party and questions about the Party politics of the writer himself. Then financial questions are posed: How will China best cash in on Mo Yan? How can he be used to boost tourism to China? The mayor of Mo Yan¹s hometown wants to create a ³Mo Yan brand,² and there is talk of turning his hometown into a theme park.
Seven years ago I interviewed Mo Yan, and have an entirely different take on the current debate.
It was September 2005 and I was writing for a Hong Kong based magazine. Mo Yan¹s brilliant epic Big Breasts and Wide Hips had just come out in English, translated by Howard Goldblatt. I was certain that he was a future Nobel winner and must be featured. But, articles on designer clad, diamond-encrusted socialites were popular and the magazine had no money for culture. I decided to do the piece anyway. With the help of Goldblatt, I contacted Mo Yan.
I paid my own flight to Beijing and went off to meet the author of that wild ride of a novel that has come to be known as his magnum opus.
I arrived to the Beijing hotel lobby twenty minutes early, hoping that meeting times had not been lost in translation. The atmosphere of the entire lobby suddenly radiated what felt like a nuclear reaction to Mo Yan¹s entrance. We know the thrill of tween girls at Taylor Swift concerts, but the concentrated, silent adoration of this humble novelist was something beyond.
Our subsequent conversation over coffee about his novel turned immediately to politics. It became clear that Mo Yan's relationship with Communist Party policy is infinitely complex. Mo Yan said that if he had written the same book 20 years ago he might have been shot. He said that he does not take political sides in his novel, but tries to, "treat all as human. I want to show the real China and real life. It seems that [my book] is about a village, but it is actually about China's history. In this book I want to cover every critical issue of the last century." Speaking about his future works, his face darkened as he mentioned the unknown consequences he always fears they could provoke. He added, "a writer without controversy is not a good one. A book without controversy is not a good one, either."
Mo Yan does all of his writing in his hometown of Gaomi, 300 miles southeast of Beijing, surrounded by family and rural peasant life. He claims he could not write the same books in Beijing. "In my hometown, I live in a small house, totally isolated from the outside world. There is no telephone. People around me are just like the people in the book." Regarding the magical, fantastical elements of his storytelling, they are there for political reasons. The symbolic elements in his novels, he told me, are not a salute to the imaginary but indicators of a reality still too dark to be named.
Mo Yan's works contain innumerable criticisms of the corruption of the Communist Party to which he belongs, still many of his fellow Chinese artists are denouncing his win. Dissident writer Yu Jie says it is a victory for the Communist Party. The American educated artist Ai Weiwei paints Mo Yan to be a sell out, citing Mo Yan¹s transcription of "Mao's Talks on Literature and Art" to mark the 70th anniversary of the speech. In it, Mao spoke vehemently about the duty of writers to create characters drawn from real life and to, "help the people discard what is backward and develop what is revolutionary."
Minus the propaganda obfuscating Mao's directives, is it so hard to see that perhaps Mo Yan was paying an ironic tribute to the Cultural Revolution responsible for his pen name (literally "no words") while he has published thousands of pages? Political censorship has elevated Mo Yan's writing because his revolutionary ideas can only be expressed with subtlety and vivid imagination. His characters, drawn directly from his own peasant background in Gaomi, are a fateful twist on what Mao intended 70 years ago.
Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy that awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, said he considers Mo Yan, "a critic of the system, sitting within the system." To write such compelling fiction featuring current government corruption, inhumane policies and the country's bloody history without being jailed, censored or having to leave his native villagers and country in favor of citizenship abroad, speak to the deep level of artistry in Mo Yan¹s novels and his commitment to his people.
Although Mo Yan publicly supported the exiled Nobel Literature Laureate Gao Xingjian, he has declined comment on many other issues until now. So it is notable that his first statement after receiving the Nobel called for the release of jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. The clout of his Nobel now permits him to vocalize opinions that have hitherto only been possible through his writing. Judgments about his Party membership and politics are preemptively naïve when all is considered.
Mo Yan¹s comments to me during our interview about the main character Shangguang Jintong in Big Breasts and Wide Hips add yet another layer of irony to the contention sparked by the award he has received. Jintong is the pampered son of a Chinese peasant mother and a Swedish missionary father. Mo Yan explained him to me saying, "he is handsome and strong but he is a dwarf emotionally. The combination of western and eastern cultures should have produced something better, but it did not." He has also said censorship is a great spur to creativity. Is it possible that Jintong is an allusion to the voice for change that Chinese artists dilute when they escape to the more lenient west. Ponder that if you will, dissident critics.
But, be assured none of this current debate can really be affecting Mo Yan all that much, given his stance that controversy is the mark of good writing. By his own standards, he has proved himself a tour de force. I am just worried where he will write his next novel once Gaomi is turned into a theme park.
