Mo Yan (pronounced /m oʊ j ɛ n/, Chinese: 莫言; pinyin: Mò Yán; meaning "don't speak") was born Guan Moye (simplified Chinese: 管谟业; traditional Chinese: 管謨業; pinyin: Guǎn Móyè) on March 5, 1955. He is a Chinese writer who became well-known for his 1984 novella, A Transparent Radish. His 1986 novel, Red Sorghum, brought him international recognition. The first two parts of this novel were adapted into the film Red Sorghum (1988), which won the Golden Bear award. In 2012, Mo Yan received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work that "with dream-like storytelling combines folk tales, history, and modern life."
Name
"Mo Yan," which means "don't speak" in Chinese, is the name he first used when writing for Lian Chi, a literary magazine in Baoding, in 1981. At that time, he was a soldier in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) stationed there. The name comes from the middle character of his birth name, "Mo" (謨), written in traditional Chinese script. It also reflects the strict political environment he experienced growing up, as his parents often warned him not to speak freely.
In his early career, he received payment for his published works under the name "Mo Yan." To collect his earnings, he needed an official letter with a stamp from his workplace. To avoid the repeated hassle, he later changed his legal name to "Mo Yan."
Biography
Mo Yan was born as Guan Moye in February 1955 to a peasant family in Ping’an Village, Gaomi Township, northeast of Shandong Province, China. His father had four years of education at a school before the revolution and learned many Chinese classic texts. His mother could not read or write. He was the youngest of four children, with two older brothers and an older sister. Though his family was not wealthy, they were classified as upper-middle peasants during government efforts to classify people based on their background because they owned a small piece of land bought with their life savings.
Because of his family’s status, Mo Yan faced discrimination from teachers and struggled in school during the Cultural Revolution, a time when education was disrupted. At age 11, he left school in the fifth grade. His family sent him to graze animals on the grasslands, where he spent long periods alone. During this time, he learned Chinese characters using a Xinhua Dictionary, the only book he had. In 1973, he began working at a cotton processing factory, where he met young people from Qingdao who introduced him to foreign books and films. During the time of Mao Zedong, most books and writers from before the revolution or outside China were banned, except for Lu Xun. However, Mo Yan grew up surrounded by Chinese folktales and regional opera, which influenced his writing.
Military service was a common way for rural youth to leave the countryside, but Mo Yan was denied because of his family’s classification. In 1976, a friend from the factory helped him enlist. After three years as a cotton worker, he joined the military. When the college entrance exam was restored during his military service, he studied for four months but found the local exam canceled that year. As a librarian in the army, he read over 1,000 books in four years and began writing.
Sun Li, a writer known for his elegant and poetic writing style, was Mo Yan’s early literary influence. In the 1980s, as foreign books became available in China, Mo Yan was influenced by writers like William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, whose magical realism style helped him express ideas and avoid censorship.
In 1981, Mo Yan published his first works in a literary magazine called Lian Chi, where he was stationed. In 1982, he was promoted and transferred to the PLA’s Joint Staff Department in Beijing. In 1984, he was admitted to the People’s Liberation Army Academy of Art because of his short story Folk Music, which was inspired by a story by Carson McCullers. He joined a two-year program at the newly created Department of Literature, led by novelist Xu Huaizhong, who became his mentor.
In 1984, Mo Yan published his first novella, A Transparent Radish, which was originally titled A Golden Radish but renamed by Xu Huaizhong. Two years later, he published Red Sorghum in 1986, which gained widespread attention and led to filmmaker Zhang Yimou adapting it for his first movie, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.
In 1987, Mo Yan’s novella Joy was published in People’s Literature, but it was criticized during the Anti-Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign. The magazine’s editor was suspended, and the issue was destroyed.
In 1988, Mo Yan published The Garlic Ballads, inspired by a real event in Shandong where farmers protested due to economic hardship. Though it was not banned immediately, it was later banned in mainland China after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. It was later published in Hong Kong and Taiwan and later unbanned. American scholar Howard Goldblatt was so impressed by the book that he began translating Mo Yan’s works, helping introduce him to international audiences.
In 1988, Mo Yan enrolled in a postgraduate program run by the Chinese Writers’ Association and Beijing Normal University. During this time, he wrote The Republic of Wine, which Goldblatt later praised as one of the most creative Chinese novels. In 1991, Mo Yan graduated with a master’s degree in literature.
In 1999, Mo Yan, along with other writers, judged an online literature contest hosted by NetEase, which helped develop internet literature in China.
In 2012, Mo Yan became the first Chinese citizen to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Some writers and artists criticized him for being close to the Chinese government. One criticism was that he participated in copying the text of the Yan’an Talks in 2012 to celebrate their 75th anniversary. Mo Yan said he copied the text because it had valid ideas but no longer met his creative needs.
After winning the Nobel Prize, author Salman Rushdie criticized Mo Yan, calling him a “patsy of the regime” for not signing a petition supporting Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident. Rushdie had not read Mo Yan’s works. Mo Yan said he would not join the petition but hoped Liu Xiaobo would be released. He compared censorship to airport security checks, saying it should not stop truth but should block lies or rumors.
In 2016, Mo Yan became the deputy chair of the Chinese Writers Association.
Works
Mo Yan began his career as a writer during the reform and opening up period in China. He published many short stories and novels in Chinese. His first published short story was titled Falling Rain on a Spring Night, which appeared in September 1981.
In 1986, the five parts of his first novel, Red Sorghum (1987), were published one after another. The novel covers the lives of a family from Shandong Province between 1923 and 1976. It describes major events in Chinese history, such as the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese Communist Revolution, and the Cultural Revolution. However, the story is told in an unusual way, such as through the perspective of Japanese soldiers who invaded China.
His second novel, The Garlic Ballads, is based on a real event in which farmers in Gaomi Township protested a government that refused to buy their crops. The Republic of Wine is a story that uses humor and food-related themes to explore topics like cannibalism, which Mo Yan compares to self-destruction in China. This style was inspired by the writer Lu Xun. Big Breasts & Wide Hips focuses on the experiences of women, including a grandmother whose body is harmed by Japanese bullets and a festival where a boy touches the breasts of women in his town. This book caused debate in China because some critics believed it showed Communist soldiers in a negative light.
Mo Yan wrote Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out in 42 days. He wrote the more than 500,000 characters in the original manuscript by hand on traditional Chinese paper using ink and a brush. He prefers writing by hand instead of using a computer with a pinyin input method because he believes typing limits the range of words he can use. Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out is a type of story that tells a tale within a tale. It follows a landlord who is reborn as different animals during the Chinese land reform movement. The landlord observes and criticizes Communist society, such as when he, as a donkey, forces two mules to share food with him, saying, “In the age of communism… mine is yours and yours is mine.”
Pow!, Mo Yan’s first book translated into English after he won the Nobel Prize, tells the story of a young boy named Luo, who is known in his village for eating a lot of meat. His village’s obsession with eating meat leads to problems and corruption. Pow! helped define Mo Yan’s writing style as “hallucinatory realism.” Another of his works, Frog, is his most recent novel. It explores the causes and effects of China’s one-child policy. Set in a small town called Gaomi, the story is told by a narrator named Tadpole, who describes his aunt Gugu. She once saved lives as a midwife but now ends lives as an abortion provider. Steven Moore of the Washington Post said, “another display of Mo Yan’s attractively daring approach to fiction. The Nobel committee chose wisely.”
Style
Mo Yan’s books are long stories about history that use a style called hallucinatory realism and include dark humor. The Nobel Prize Committee, which gave him the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature, said his style mixes “folk tales, history, and the present.” His writing uses creative descriptions of colors. A common theme in his work is how people often stay greedy and dishonest, even when influenced by ideas. He uses bright, complex, and sometimes violent images, and many of his stories take place near his hometown, Northeast Gaomi Township in Shandong province.
Mo Yan’s writing often focuses on social issues. He is influenced by the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez and the realistic stories of Lu Xun. He said reading William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury helped him use people he knew, like his family and villagers, as characters in his books. He makes fun of socialist realism by putting workers and government officials in silly situations. In traditional Chinese literature, he is inspired by the classic story Water Margin. He also mentions Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber as important influences. His style is shaped by old Chinese stories from the Six Dynasties, Ming, and Qing dynasties, and especially by folk tales. His work combines these influences into a unique voice in world literature.
In The Old Gun, Mo Yan shows traditional values within his mythical storytelling, offering a look at how quickly China is changing. This short story was part of the Xungen movement, which encouraged people to return to traditional values. This movement showed worry about losing cultural identity as China modernized in the 1980s. Mo Yan reads books from other countries and supports reading literature from around the world. At the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair, he talked about Goethe’s idea of “world literature,” saying that “literature can break down barriers between countries and people.”
Mo Yan’s writing mixes the past and present, and often shows unclear lines between good and bad. He sometimes appears in his books as a character based on himself, retelling and changing his own stories. In Big Breasts & Wide Hips, his female characters often do not follow traditional roles, like the mother of the Shangguan family, who has children with men other than her husband. The book also shows men in power in a negative way, with only one male hero.
As of 2012, Mo Yan was the Chinese writer with the most books translated into other languages. His books have been translated into English by Howard Goldblatt. Donald Morrison of TIME called Mo Yan “one of the most famous, often banned, and widely copied Chinese writers.” Jim Leach compared him to Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller.