Editor's note: The following was translated and edited from a blog article that appeared on iFeng.com's blog highlight section. In it, the author remarks on the brutal realism in Mo Yan's writings—which until his recent Nobel win were culturally sidelined along with other important social themes—and how its re-entry into the Chinese spotlight is a welcome change for contemporary Chinese literature.

Writer Mo Yan's new status as the first Chinese national to win the Nobel Prize in Literature has become a major media event, with papers and magazines bringing all kinds of opinions and stories to the table before the dust has even settled. The stories and subject matter brought to life by Mo and his fellow Chinese writers—including topics that mainstream audiences stopped caring about long ago—suddenly find themselves thrust back into the spotlight. People who had never heard his name or had stopped reading literature altogether are announcing plans to go and buy his books. It's hard to deny there's a certain sense of opportunity in the air for the once-marginalized world of contemporary Chinese literature.

A man with a voice

Whether you're a supporter or a naysayer, the situation has simply become fact. Like a mountain, you can say you like it or you don't, but you can't say it's not there. Clearly, critical opinion of literature has never been unanimous, but if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that Mo Yan didn't win that Prize for "not speaking," as his name implies [Mo Yan's Chinese pen name "莫言" which literally means "don't speak"]. On the contrary, Mo gained worldwide acceptance precisely because he didn't shut up about issues in Chinese society. Of course, when he speaks it's not as a social commentator but as a writer, and his voice is literature. It is precisely his kind of attitude that is lacking in so-called "transcendent", "fantastic", "neo-romantic" commercial literary circles today. Mo's 2011 novel Frog, for instance—a reflection on abortion and China's one-child policy—is enough to make many writers, editors, and publishers step back and gasp just thinking about it.

Real people, real situations: Mo's unapologetic themes and characters

At the heart of Mo's writing is the "homeland", that patch of earth he both hates and deeply loves, the petri dish of the Chinese soul, a window into our hopes and dreams and the state of our survival. Mo doesn't shy away from the disasters and hardships endured in recent history, nor does he go out of his way to cover up China's weaknesses. His characters struggle on the brink of life and death, gritting their teeth and growing old and loving and hurting, yet never losing their passion for life itself. It's not that you can't find other examples in contemporary Chinese literature, but there's certainly not enough of it. The fact that readers now have such easy access to Mo's works is a minor miracle of an often overly paranoid publishing industry.

What makes Mo Yan's works unforgettable are not the larger-than-life heroes of other fiction but the low-lifes, the ones whose contemptible lives mash together to form real history. The villagers who charge the Japanese army in a suicide assault in between swigs of sorghum liquor, the peasants who can't sell the garlic their government forced them to grow, the women who died in forced abortions after they disobeyed the one-child policy, the victims of "natural disasters" that took lives like so many blades of grass, the government officials who hoarded money for years never daring to let it see the light of day; these are real characters. For obvious reasons, these situations have been cloaked in a sort of "magical realism". You might call it part of Mo Yan's literary style, or you might call it a more passive decision, the result of an exercise in "constrained" writing.

For years I have been haunted by a scene in one of his stories, "Three Years of Natural Disaster", in which an old man swallows animal feed where he works so he can vomit it back up at home to save his grandson from starving. Scenes like this shock and disturb; writers like this deserve our respect. This is material that only someone with experience and a deep reverence for life can express. Compared to the many other writers who failed to do justice to their own hardships, Mo Yan's recognition is well-earned.

To speak in China needs courage and fame

Mo Yan's description of suffering, however, seems to stop at surface level, never really getting to the core of what causes it or what we can do to prevent it. Then again, using a politician or sociologist's standards to judge an author like Mo Yan is hardly fair, but it is something he's going to have to deal with now that he's not just any author anymore. After his Nobel win, people are going to expect responses from him on all sorts of social issues, including the Diaoyu Islands controversy. And when they do, Mo Yan would do well to cherish his newfound power of speech. Because as everyone knows, to speak the truth in China you need more than courage; you need to be famous—a luxury a lot of celebrities have made poor use of.
 

Source: iFeng.com
 

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Keywords: Mo Yan Nobel Prize Mo Yan contemporary Chinese literature Chinese nobel prize winner Chinese analysis of Mo Yan