By throwing his weight behind the Lui Che Woo Prize, Mo Yan, Nobel-laureate for literature, is extending the scope of the altruistic impulse that shines through much of his writing. Chitralekha Basu reports.

Presumably China's most internationally well-known writer, the Nobel-laureate Mo Yan acknowledged his literary debt to the Hong Kong writer Dung Kai-cheung during an interview with China Daily last month. Mo's raising of the hat to the much younger Dung is aligned to the spirit of generosity that runs through much of his fiction. The ability to see the regenerative elements of life in the most dire of situations is the hallmark of Mo's writing, to say nothing of the stunningly vivid, powerful images he creates to present these goriest of truths. His faith in the irrepressible human spirit that finds a way of reaffirming its resilience against immeasurable odds seems to issue out of a fountainhead of compassion and large-heartedness. It's a quality often found in the works of the world's finest writers - a sign of what the poet John Keats might have called "the holiness of heart's affections". By becoming an ambassador of the Lui Che Woo Prize, Mo seems to have extended the scope of a similar altruism at the core of his writing.

The eponymous prize, started by the Hong Kong-based philanthropist Lui Che-woo in 2015, is one of the world's most valuable awards given to individuals and organizations for outstanding achievements toward building a safe and sustainable world, replete with positive values. In Hong Kong to promote the Lui award, Mo talked about the range and value of the award and his role in shortlisting the candidates, even as he seemed conscious, perhaps even slightly regretful, of drawing some attention to himself in the process. He kept reiterating that charity loses some of its sheen when the donator tries to gain brownie points out of the act and, true to his words, declined discussing his personal contributions to humanitarian causes. "Giving away money is not about doing the recipients a favor," said Mo. "Rather it's about helping others to fulfill their needs in a meaningful way. Such an act becomes valuable by making the giver feel blessed."

Son of the soil

Having been through a life of unrelenting hardship between around age 11 and 21, Mo Yan's commitment to work toward human welfare comes as no surprise. During those years, classes were scrapped. Students were made to engage in a life of hard labor. Mo was forced to drop out of school and became a cowherd, grazing cattle on the arid, uncultivable land in his hometown in Gaomi county in Shandong, an eastern costal province of China. He went hungry on most days, with barely enough clothing to cover his bottom. The scene in his novel Frog (2009) where a whole bunch of pre-teens starts nibbling lumps of coal, pretending to enjoy it after a point, is a re-creation of a lived experience.

Mo still has deep regrets about missing out on school. He hastens to add, however, that his early entry into the complicated and often morally corrupted world of adults in a country in deep turmoil was in fact "a unique opportunity to enrich my writing abilities". And while life was a daily struggle to hold out against the forces of nature, "it helped me connect with nature, forge very intimate ties with it," said Mo. "I became particularly sensitive to the pasture, cattle and sheep and plants, understanding them more intensely than kids my age normally would."

The theme of hunger has been masterfully maneuvered by writers like Knut Hamsun and Franz Kafka to depict man's ability to rise above his state, turn abjectness into a creative enterprise, howsoever bizarre. There are many such instances in Mo's fiction, including a particularly macabre but nonetheless captivating scene in Red Sorghum (1986). Gaomi county is seized by the Japanese troops. Enraged by the passive but steadfast resistance shown by uncle Arhat, the commanding officer orders him to be skinned alive. Mo describes the scene in unsparing graphic detail. The peeling of uncle Arhat, by the village butcher who is made to act at gunpoint, is a meticulously performed, perfectly executed feat - almost a tribute to the deceased. The climax is cathartic, with heavy rains washing away the last drop of blood from the execution site and uncle Arhat's story apotheosized as part of the local lore.

"Doubtless, poverty brings out the worst in human beings," said Mo. "Then at the same time, under extreme poverty, the benign side of human beings shines even more gloriously, dazzling us." His short story Man and Beast, in which the protagonist Yu Zhan'ao from Red Sorghum reappears, illustrates this rather well. Waiting to ambush the advancing Japanese troops, Yu, the leader of a ragtag rebel army, finds himself stepping into a fox's lair. Much like a feral animal himself, Yu has no qualms about dislodging the fox couple from their den and pushing them to their deaths following a protracted battle. A while later, the sight of a lost Japanese woman brings out the animal in him again. He proceeds to rape her, unleashing the pent-up racial hatred lodged deep in his heart. And then a black patch sewn to her undergarment reminds him of the first meeting with the mother of his son. A sudden flush of love for the woman he had once raped stops him from committing a similar act on another helpless woman.

From page to stage

Mo isn't finished with Red Sorghum yet. More than 20 years after its publication and several play and film adaptations (including a much celebrated one by Zhang Yimou) later, he keeps coming back to the story - commonly recognized as a representative novel of China the world over. Unhappy with the play-scripts based on the novel in circulation, Mo recently adapted the first two chapters of the book into a play, to be published in People's Literature (Renmin Wenxue) magazine. He has also written an opera based on the historical novel Sandalwood Death (2001), set against the backdrop of the "Boxer Rebellion" (1899-1901), due out soon in Shiyue magazine.

While the ravishing, intense, sensual imagery generic to Mo's fiction often conjures up a cinematic experience for his readers, Mo, it turns out, has always been in love with the theater. "I am drawn to plays," he said. "I was influenced by the local Chinese opera. I had long fantasized about composing an opera that actors will sing on stage."

He recently published an opera script in People's Literature, based on a tale he had heard from his mother. It will be staged this year, Mo informed us.

Understandably, he wants to see his stories come to life in their different manifestations, across different literary and performance art forms. The man who never stepped out of his provincial life in Gaomi county until he was 21 is welcoming and ready to embrace the tremendous changes China has witnessed since then. And that includes young people who might be reading his books on a phone as they use the other hand to hold the handrail of a moving escalator.

Wearing different hats

The unshakable bond between a land and the people who draw their sustenance from it is still quite central to Mo's writing. This is exemplified particularly ingeniously in the novel Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (2006), in which the benevolent landowner Ximen Nao, executed in the wake of the land reform movement, is reincarnated as donkey, ox, pig, dog, monkey and ultimately a human child, revisiting his land and folks in subsequent births, watching them deal with the newer exigencies of a steadily and sometimes radically altering China through the second half of the 20th century.

During his life as a pig in the 1970s, Ximen Nao becomes a victim of corruption in the ranks. The fodder served to him at the village pig-raising farm is mixed with rat droppings and eventually, after a particularly harsh winter when agricultural production is at an all-time low and there is no pig-feed left to go around, with the meat of dying pigs - playing havoc with the food chain and vitiating the ecosystem.

The memory of those years serves as a reminder to use the natural resources at our disposal with care and use them well - one of the core values the Lui prize seeks to uphold and help enhance.

"We have to develop the economy on a sustainable basis," said Mo. "We shouldn't think only of our own generation but also need to consider the needs of the thousands of generations who will come after us, so that our offspring can live in a clean, beautiful environment."

Like Ximen Nao, who was reborn on earth in his several different incarnations, narrating the story of the making of present-day China, Mo Yan too has been telling the China story over the years. It's just that sometimes he likes wearing different hats - be it that of a novelist, librettist or an ambassador of the Lui prize.

Honey Tsang contributed to the story.

(HK Edition 05/21/2018 page8)