Ninety Minutes with Howard Goldblatt:

Those of us who saw Mo Yan at the Bookworm were given a double treat, as the Chinese author was joined by his translator (翻译家), Howard Goldblatt. Goldblatt is currently research professor of Chinese language and literature at Notre Dame. In addition to Yan's writing, he has translated the work of many other contemporary Chinese novelists.

Thanks to Goldblatt's efforts in this area, many previously unknown young Chinese writers have been introduced to English speaking readers. One such writer is the author of the novel, BEIJING DOLL (北京娃娃), Chun Sue (春树). Chun wrote this book, which is largely based on her own life as a rebellious (叛逆的) fourteen year-old adolescent girl (女孩儿) living in Beijing’s Haidian (海淀) district (区), when she was just eighteen years old

Goldblatt has also translated two novels by one of my favorite living Chinese writers, Su Tong (苏童). These include Tong's early, very macrabre and utterly bleak story, RICE (米), and his latest novel to be translated into English, MY LIFE AS EMPEROR (我的帝王生涯).

The latter book is not a cheery tale, but it's by far and away the most optimistic of Tong's works. After losing his kingdom and doing a brief stint as tight-rope walker in a circus troupe, the previously cruel and dissolute Emperor Duanbai becomes a monk at the Bitter Bamboo Mountain Monastery. The former Emperor, who is now a better human being, passes his days at the monastery reading Confucius’s (孔子) ANALECTS (论语) and practicing his tight-rope walking.

The novel is narrated in retrospect by the ex-sovereign. In the last sentence, the ex-ruler makes the following memorable verdict on the ANALECTS: “Sometimes I feel that this sagely book holds all the wisdom of the world; sometimes I don't get anything at all out of it”.

Finally, Goldblatt has translated the latest Chinese novel that has created a big stir outside of the Middle Kingdom, THE WOLF TOTEM (狼图腾). This book was published here in 2004, and its author is an ex-Red Guardsman (红卫兵) who was sent to Inner Mongolia (内蒙古) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The author originally wrote the book under the pseudonym of Jiang Rong (姜戎); however, last year he disclosed his real name, Lu Jiamin (路加敏). Lu is in his early 60's and used to teach political economy.

Goldblatt briefly mentioned this last novel during his Bookworm talk. Although THE WOLF TOTEM was published here—a sign that things here with respect to freedom of expression are improving—it has been a very controversial book that people have either loved or hated. Goldblatt noted that while many Chinese critics called Lu a “crypto-fascist” (法西斯), Jonathan Mirsky hailed THE WOLF TOTEM as the “book of the year”.

In any case, I suspect that despite his problems, Lu is now laughing all the way to the bank. THE WOLF TOTEM sold 4 million copies in its first year of publication in China. The novel then created a literary sensation (轰动文坛的作品) in the West, with Penguin offering Lu $100,000 for worldwide English translation rights. And Bertelsmann paid him 20,000 Euros for the German translation rights.

Goldblatt noted that he is currently in the middle of translating THE SANDALWOOD TORTURE into English and said that he anticipates that, as in China, readers in the West will either love or hate this book. And alluding to the title of LIFE AND DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT, Goldblatt quipped that after having translated four of Yan's novels and many of his short stories, “Mo Yan is wearing me out” (doing these Mo Yan posts has worn me out too!!).

While translating literature from a language that is related to English, like German, is certainly not easy, it's a walk on the beach compared with translating from Mandarin to English. In an interview with the local expat magazine, THE BEIJINGER, given some time before the Bookworm event, Goldblatt stated, “The two languages are so dissimilar that one frequently has to consider ways to turn what the author wrote into what the author meant” He added, “Translating Chinese requires a keener sense of creativity than most languages.”

As if that wasn't enough, Goldblatt noted that Yan's novels present some very unique translation problems. One is the writing style. At one point in the talk, Goldblatt noted that people have said that “Yan has never met an adjective (形容词) that he didn't like”. Goldblatt thus said that he constantly fights with his editors over paring down the number of adjectives in his translations of Yan's writing.

Goldblatt also said that the vocabularly in two of Yan's novels, RED SORGHUM and THE REPUBLIC OF WINE (国酒) created a lot of translation difficulties. Much of the former novel's plot (情节) revolves around the fight waged by different guerilla (游击队员) groups against the Japanese during the War of Resistance against Japanese Agression (抗日战争).

Goldblatt informed us that he had to ask Yan lots of questions about the weapons described in this part of the novel, as many of them were traditional Chinese muskets (火枪) and other very archaic guns. The Chinese words for these and many of the other weapons in Yan's novel had no English-language equivalents. Goldblatt added that in some cases, Yan had to ask soldiers about these arms before he could answer his translator's querries.

Visitors to Beijing and expats living here who are interested in this matter should head over to the capital's military museum (军事博物馆). There you can see first hand the kind of motely arsenal the guerilla fighters, including those in the fabled 8th Route Army (八路军), had to use against their much better equipped Japanese foes. These weapons included not only ancient muskets, but spears (矛; 长枪) and scythes (大镰刀) as well.

As Max Hastings notes in his riveting new book about the last year of World War II in the Pacific, NEMESIS, that the Communist guerillas received no material backing from Stalin (斯大林), who bet on the Nationalists (国民党) right up to the end of the war. The guerillas thus had to make do with what weapons they could make on their or capture from the Japanese.

I could add here that RED SORGHUM provides a revisionist account of this struggle, much like Yan's later novel, THE SANDALWOOD TORTURE, did for the story of resistance to German imperialism in early 20th century Shandong Province. The guerilla fighters are split into different groups who spend as much time fighting each other as they do the Japanese. And some people do collaborate with the invaders. The Chinese have a special term for such folks, namely “hanjian” 汉奸, which also means all-around bad person and “traitor” (they were also called “running dogs” [走狗] and, more politely, Japanese collaborators [和日本人合作的中国人]).

Goldblatt noted that the vocabulary in THE RPEUBLIC OF WINE presented similar translation problems. This novel parodies key aspects of Chinese society (中国的社会), particularly its obsession with gourmandry (美食) and commodification of alcohol (酒), with a bit of cannibalism (食人者) thrown into the mix. Goldblatt said that he had to constantly ask Yan about all the obscure liquors referred in this novel. And to make things even harder, some of the drinks mentioned in it were completely fictional, invented by Yan himself.

Like the author he has translated, Goldblatt comes across as a very modest and completely unprentious individual. For example, he said that he never reads his own translations after they're done. Goldblatt stated that if he reads the first page of such work, he'll be “crest-fallen (垂头丧气) over all of the errors”. And since Goldblatt avoided a lot of training in current academic literary theory and criticism in coming to translate Chinese fiction, his writing is free of post-modernist mumbo-jumbo.

Goldblatt told an interesting story about his first meeting with Yan. The two were at some conference, and Yan studiously ignored him for nearly an hour (Yan said that he was too shy and felt too intimidated to approach Goldblatt). The two finally broke the ice by sharing a cigarette (抽烟)—like many males in China, Yan is a smoker. Goldblatt said at that time he had been trying to quit smoking for three years and that this incident further prolonged that struggle. However, as Yan put it, “So many years of friendship (友谊; you3yi4) started by a humble cigarette”. And they say smoking is bad for you!!

The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.

翻译家 (fan1yi4jia1). “翻译” is the verb “translate”, while “家” is the suffix denoting that someone is a qualified expert to do such work.
北京娃娃 (Bei3jing1wa2wa5). “北京” is the Chinese word for “Beijing” and literally means “Northern (北) Capital (京)” (the City of Nanjing is the Southern [南; nan2] Capital [京]). “娃娃” means “doll”.
春树. The pinyin of this name is really “Chun1Shu4”, with the first character meaning “spring” and the second one “tree”.
叛逆的 (pan3ni4de5).
女孩儿 (nü3hai2er2).
海淀 (hai3dian4). “海” on its own means “sea”, while “淀” is the Chinese word for “shallow lake”. This part of Beijing, which covers the northwest part of the capital, has a number of small and shallow lakes. It is also home to three of China’s best Universities—People’s University (人民大学; ren2min2da4xue2), Peking University (北大; bei3da4) and Tsinghua University (清华大学; qing1hua4da4xue2).
区 (qu1).
苏童. Like 莫言, this is a pen name; the author's real name is 童忠贵 (tong2zhong1gui4).
米 (mi3). Due to its distinctive asterisk shape, this is one of the easiest Chinese characters to remember.
我的帝王生涯 (wo3de4di4wang2sheng1ya2). “帝王” means “emperor” (皇帝 [huang2di4] is another word for “monarch” or “king”). “生涯” means “career”, so the novel's title can be literally translated as “My Career as Emperor”.
孔子 (kong3zi3).
论语 (lun2yu3).
狼图腾 (lang2tu2teng2). The left-hand side of the “wolf” character (狼) has the “dog” radical, providing a clue about its meaning. “图腾” is the word for “totem”, and the first character, “图”, forms part of the Chinese word for map, “地图” (di4tu2).
红卫兵 (hong2wei4bing1). “红” on its own means “red” and here of course symbolizes the revolution (革命; ge2ming4). “卫” on its own means sanitary/sanitation, and 兵 is a word for “soldier”.
内蒙古 (nei4meng3gu3). “内” is the Chinese word for “inner”; hence “underwear” is called “内裤” (nei4ku4), or “inner (内) pants (裤)”.
法西斯 (fa3xi1si1). Since “fascism” is a foreign word, this character triplet is a transliteration and it actually kind of sounds like the way “fascism” is said in English.
轰动文坛的作品 (hong1dong4wen2 tan2de5zuo4pin3). “轰动” on its own is a verb meaning to “cause a sensation”.
形容词 (xing2rong2ci2).
国酒 (guo2jiu3). “国” on its own means “nation” or “kingdom”, while “酒” is the word for “liquor/alcohol”.
情节 (qing2jie2).
游击队员 (you2ji1dui4yuan2). This character combination is a good illustration of why Mandarin is typically a very logical language. “游” on its own means “swim”, while “击” means “strike” or “attack”. As Mao famously said, guerillas are like fish in the population sea and attack enemy forces at times and places of their own choosing. “队员” means “team member”. All of this stands in sharp contrast to the English language: the word “guerilla” is a French import, so by itself provides little clue about its meaning.
抗日战争 (kang4ri4zhan4zheng1). “抗” by itself means “anti-” or “resist”, “日” is the shortened form word for “Japan” (日本; ri4ben3), and “战争” is the word for “war”.
火枪 (huo3qiang1). “火” is the Chinese word for “fire” (as in “smoke and fire”), while “枪” has several meanings, one of which is “gun”.
军事博物馆 (jun1shi4bo2wu4guan3). “军事” is the Chinese word for “military” and “博物馆” is the word for “museum”.
八路军 (ba1lu4jun1). “八” is the Chinese word for “8”, “路” means “route/road”, and “军” on its own means “army”.
矛; 长枪 (mao2; chang2qiang1).
大镰刀 (da4lian2dao1). “大” means “big”, while “刀” by itself means “knife”.
斯大林 (si1da4lin2).
国民党 (guo2min2dang3). The last character, “党”, is the Chinese word for political party.
走狗 (zou3gou3). “走” is “running” here, while “狗” means “dog”.
和日本人合作的中国人 (he2ri4ben3ren2he2zuo4de5zhong1guo2ren2). This is translated from Mandarin as “Chinese (中国人) collaborators (合作) with the Japanese (日本人)”.
中国的社会 (zhong1guo2de5she4hui4). “中国的” is “Chinese”, while “社会” is “society”.
美食 (mei3shi2). This literally means “beautiful/delicious (美) eating (食)”.
酒 (jiu3).
食人者 (shi2ren2zhe3). Or, more literally, “eating (人) person (食) kind of individual (者)”. Once again, Mandarin is such a logical language!!
垂头丧气 (chui2tou2sang4qi4). “垂头” means to “hang one's head down”.
抽烟 (chou1yan1). “烟” on its own means “smoke”.
友谊 (you3yi4). The first character “友” forms half of the Chinese word for “friend”, which is “朋友” (peng2you3).

A Word about the Mo Yan Phrase:

In an earlier blog post, I noted that Yan had made an interesting comment about a main character in LIFE AND DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT, a fellow nick-named “blue-face”, on account of the peculiar birthmark on his face. The guy was described as being a “Stone in an outhouse, hard and stinky”. One of my Chinese friends translated this sentence into Mandarin a week after the post appeared. Her translation is as follows: “茅房里的石头，又臭又硬” (mao2fang2li3de5shi2tou2, you4chou4you4ying4). “茅房” is the word for “outhouse”, “石头” is the word for stone, “里的” is the word for “inside of”, “臭” is the word for “stinky”, “硬” is the word for “hard”, and “又” is “and/also”. A reader named “Bokane” has offered almost the same translation, but with a different word for “outhouse,” namely “茅坑” (mao2keng1). It was good to get the latter comment and I look forward to receiving more feedback on my blog in the future.

Ninety minutes with Mo Yan (莫言), 3: The novelist and the Computer (小说家和电脑):

Nearly all of us today write on the computer and find that doing this really boosts our productivity. For years now I've composed on the computer screen and have limited the pre-computer writing activity to making some basic notes or a bare outline. Using the computer makes it far easier to correct, cut and paste, and the like.

However, Yan is an exception to this rule. Yan said at the Bookworm event that he had spent some five years writing with a computer. But he then quit, feeling that it sapped his creativity (创造力). Thus Yan wrote his latest novel, LIFE AND DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT, entirely by hand, using brush and ink on traditional Chinese paper.

This novel has some 500,000 Chinese characters, which amounts to around 400 pages of prose after being translated into English. While Yan said he had been thinking about this book for some four decades, he was able to do the actual writing in just 43 days!

Yan added that he had been bird-dogged for many by a computer company who wanted him to endorse their PC brand. These people felt that being able say, “Mo Yan writes using our computer” would make for very good publicity. However, Yan said that when the word got out about the way he wrote LIFE AND DEATH AND WEARING ME OUT, these people quit bothering him.

Just three Chinese words in this post: 小说家 (xiao3shuo1jia1) or novelist, 电脑 (dian4nao3), which literally means “electronic (电) brain (脑), and 创造力 (chuang4zao4li4).

Ninety minutes with Mo Yan (莫言), 2: Influences on his work:

In addition to discussing his two recent novels, LIFE AND DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT and THE SANDALWOOD TORTURE at this year's Bookworm International Literary, Mo Yan talked about what has influenced him the most as a writer. And for me, getting the chance to ask him a question about this matter made the talk even more memorable.

As I noted in the previous post, Yan doesn't have much formal education. He was kicked out of elementary school during the 5th Grade for smoking a cigarette and never went to college or a university. It comes then as no surpise, that the biggest influence (影响) on his work has been the story telling narratives spun by ordinary people, Laobaixing (老百姓), in his home town of Gaomi (高密) in Shandong (山东) province.

All writers are certainly influenced by their immediate surroundings and draw from them. However, I suspect this is especially so for Mo Yan. In any case, Yan emphatically stated that afternoon that his fiction has first and foremost drawn upon the oral histories told by his hometown's Laobaixing. He further stated that writers are like bandits and stake out their own territory.

If that's the case, then Yan has surely claimed Gaomi (高密) and the surrounding area, which is located near Qingdao (青岛). He has done so in much the same way as Raymond Chandler claimed Los Angeles, circa 1938-1953, Zhang Ailing (张爱玲) claimed 1930s and 1940s Shanghai and Günter claimed Danzig (present-day Gdansk) before and during the Second World War. And since Yan's writing draws so heavily from this area's folk drama, it's very colloquial (口语的; 通俗的) and coarse, as well as not so grammatically correct.

Yan stated that critics (文艺评论家) who fault him for having a rough and unpolished (粗糙) writing style (风格) miss the point of his writing, which is to use the language of the local Laobaixing (老百姓). Thus Yan's work is peppered with lots of Shandong dialect (山东话) and its peculiar slang (俚语; 口语) words.

One commentary I read on the internet while doing a bit of research for this and the other Mo Yan posts called his style a “skillful imitation of folk opera—a splendid street performance full of sound and imagery leaving nothing to the imagination.” This commentary noted that Yan has been heavily influenced by this area of Shandong Province's unique form of opera. This opera has a so-called “cat tone”—as one might guess, the singing mimicks a cat's yowling—and is performed at funerals, weddings and religious ceremonies.

The commentary, which was done by Yue Tao, the Chinese Affairs coordinator at Leiden University in the Netherlands, added that the roughness of Yan's language and its lowbrow style “charms many Chinese”. And referring to THE SANDALWOOD TORTURE, Tao added that because of this style, the novel “is not a clichéd (陈词滥调) anti-colonial (抗殖民) class struggle (阶级斗争) story (故事)”.

Of course the grandfather of Yan's writing style is the great early 20th Century Chinese author Lu Xun (鲁迅). Xun vigorously championed replacing classical Chinese (古文), which had previously been used in literary writing, with ordinary vernacular (白话) language.

During his talk, Yan also noted that Lu was one inspiration behind his recent novel, THE SANDALWOOD TORTURE. As I mentioned in the previous blog post, Yan stated that one purpose of this work was to mediate on the morality of capital punishment. Yan thus mentioned in his talk the famous incident that caused Lu to give up a career in medicine and turn to writing. After moving to Japan in 1906, where he lived for several years, Lu saw, in an early movie theater, a crude newsreel showing a Chinese man being beheaded (斩首) by the Russians to serve as an “example” to the local people. The writer was upset not just by the execution (处决), but by the large numbers of Chinese people watching and enjoying the spectacle.

The Wikipedia entry on Lu Xun also mentions this event and quotes Lu's feelings about it. Lu wrote that the Chinese spectators were “physically healthy” but “their expressions revealed all too clearly that spiritually, they were calloused and numb”. Yan noted in his talk that after this incident, Lu decided that he should try to cure the sick minds of the Chinese through his writing, rather than heal their bodies.

In making this comment, Yan noted that since his novels contain a lot of violence, many critics have speculated that he himself is a cruel and violent individual. However, Yan told us that he is really a very timid (胆小) person. As Yan put it, “I dare not even kill a chicken”.

Yan mentioned another Chinese literary influence on his work during the talk. This writer is the Qing Dynasty author, Pu Songling (蒲松龄), who wrote a book entitled STRANGE STORIES FROM A CHINESE STUDIO (聊斋志异). These tales featured animals turning into humans, particularly foxes becoming women. Yan stated his tale of reincarnation in LIFE AND DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT, in which the protagonist is successively reborn as different animals, was partially inspired by Pu's work.

The highlight of the talk for me was getting the opportunity to ask Yan a question—indeed, there was time for just one question and I got to ask it. The works of Yan I have read, RED SORGHUM and the short story compilation, SHIFOU, YOU'LL DO ANYTHING FOR A LAUGH, had always struck me as being quite similar to 1970s and 1980s Latin American “magical realism” fiction. I really didn't know before asking this question that Yan has, in fact, been dubbed as China's answer to the leading exponent of “magical realism,” the great Columbian (哥伦比亚) novelist and Nobel Prize laureate, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (马尔克斯).

Yan stated that he has indeed read Marquez and has been influenced by the author's work (since Yan doesn't know any foreign languages, he reads Chinese translations of this literature). In particular, he said that it took him slightly more than two decades to get through Marquez's most famous novel (小说), ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE (百年孤獨). After hearing that, I didn't feel quite so bad about my initial struggles to read that book. It was only after the second go that I was able to appreciate that ONE HUNRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE is indeed a great work of literature. However, I still believe that Marquez's later and other well-known novel, LOVE IN THE TIME CHOLERA (霍乱时期的爱情) is much more accessible.

In talking about Marquez's work, Yan told us that he finally finished ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE after 21 years because he had been invited to a conference in Tokyo in which Maquez was the other featured writer. Yan said that since Marquez was going to be there, he felt that he'd better finish reading the novel.

Yan also said that he likes the American author William Faulkner (福克纳). But he also confessed to struggling with Faulkner's best known novel, THE SOUND AND THE FURY. Indeed, Yan said that unlike the Marquez novel, he has never been able to finish that work. Yan added that he would probably never finish this novel, as Faulkner has long been dead, so there is no chance of appearing with him at a conference (I have to confess that I've never been able to get into Faulkner—too many long sentences, too much Southern Gothic for my liking!).

Yan's answer to my question shows that he is a very modest and self-deprecating kind of individual. Unlike many authors who become insufferably pretentious after achieving fame, Yan doesn't seem to have a pretentious bone in his body. He's still very much a laobaixing, but a laobaixing who just happens to be one of China's and indeed the world's greatest writers.

The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.

影响 (ying3xiang3). “影” on its own means “shadow” and it appears in the Chinese word for movie, “电影” (dian4ying3), which literally means “electronic (电) shadow (影)”. “响” on its own means “sound” or “resonate”.
口语; 通俗的 (kou3yu3; tong1su2de). “口语” can also be translated as “oral (口) language”, with the “口” character resembling an opening, like a mouth. “通” is the word for “common”, while the “俗” character appears in the Chinese word for “custom(s)” (风俗; feng1su2).
文艺评论家 (wen2yi4ping2lun4jia1). “文艺” means “literature and art”, while “评论” is one Chinese word for “criticize” or “criticism”; the other two are “批评” (pi1ping2) 批判 (pi1pan4). The “家” suffix denotes that someone who is a qualified expert to do a particular task.
粗糙 (cu1cao1). One could also say that Yan's writing lacks embellishment or refinement. These adjectives can be translated into Mandarin as “加修饰” (jia1xiu1shi4).
风格 (feng1ge2). Unlike English, Mandarin has separate words for writing and artistic style, or “风格”, and style, as in clothing style. The word for the latter is “样式” (yang4shi4).
俚语; 口语 (li3yu3; kou3yu3). “语” is in the Chinese word for language “语言”. Readers can notice that the “口” character appears at the bottom right hand side of “语” and at the bottom of “言”, providing a clue about the meaning of these characters.
陈词滥调 (chen1ci2lan4diao4). This is also the Chinese word for “hackneyed” and “stale” (in the verbal sense).
抗殖民 (kang4zhi2min2). “抗” means “anti-/against”, while “殖民” is the word for “colonial”.
阶级斗争 (jie1ji2dou4zheng1). “阶级” is the word for “class”, while “争” means “struggle” and appears in the Chinese term for “war/conflict” (战争; zhan4zheng1).
故事 (gu4shi4).
古文 (gu3wen2). This literally means “very old/ancient/classical (古) language (文)”.
白话 (bai2hua4). And this term literally means “plain/pure (白) speech/talk (话)”. “白” is also the word for “white”.
斩首 (zhan3shou3). “斩” on its own means “chop”, while “首” is one Chinese word for “head” (“头” [tou2] is more commonly used in other phrases and sentences).
处决 (chu3jue2).
胆小 (dan3xiao3). “胆” on its own means “courage” and “audacity”, while “小” is one way of saying “small”. So the term literally means “lacking/small in courage”.
聊斋志异 (liao4zhai1zhi4yi4). “聊” on its own mean “to converse” or “conversation” and “斋” is a shortened form of the word for “studio” (吃斋; chi1zhai1). “志异” is the word for “fabulous tales”.
哥伦比亚 (ge1lun2bi3ya4). This transliteration actually sounds pretty much like “Columbia”. 马尔克斯 (ma3er2ke4si1). It's very important to say the rising tone “er” “尔” here; otherwise your Chinese listeners might think you're talking about Karl Marx. The Chinese transliterations of Marquez and Marx's names sound almost alike, with the former being “马克思” (ma3ke4si1). The Chinese word for “Marxism” is “马克思主义” (ma3ke4si1zhu3yi4). “主义” means “ism” or “doctrine”.
小说 (xiao3shuo1). This literally means “small (小) speaking (说);” since many novels are hardly small, the logic behind this character combination, unlike many of the others in Mandarin, has always baffled me.
百年孤獨 (bai3nian2gu1du2). “百年” means “100 (白) years (年)”, while “孤獨” means “solitude”.
霍乱时期的爱情 (huo4luan4dshi2qi1de 5ai4qing2). “霍乱” is cholera, “时期” means “time” in the sense of a period or era, and “爱情” is “love affair”.
福克纳 (fu2ke4na4).

Ninety Minutes with Mo Yan (莫言), I: The Author Talks About two of His Recent Novels:

The San Litun (三里屯) street on the east side of Beijing, near Chaoyang Park, is known mainly for its bars and, more recently, the brand-spanking new and very upscale Village Shopping Mall. However, one of the best things about this area is arguably the small independent bookstore located at the south end of the so-called “bar street”. The name of this place is the “Bookworm”.

Its owner is a 50-something British expat named Alexandra Pearson. Her establishment is not only a small but good independent bookstore, but also functions as a lending library and is a pretty nice restaurant and bar to boot. The food is good and, compared to other upscale Western dining establishments in the capital, not that pricey. Moreover, there are plenty of comfortable seats and sofas in one of the back rooms, wireless internet, and excellent techno and acid jazz music in the background. All of this makes the Bookworm a good place to spend a cold winter afternoon reading a book or surfing the web over one or two or three lattes (or a bit of wine).

But the best thing about the Bookworm is the annual literary festival (读书节) it holds in March. Last year I got to see Rob Gifford, NPR's former China correspondent, talk about and then sign his terrific new book, CHINA ROAD. And this year I heard Jasper Becker discuss his great new history of Beijing, CITY OF HEAVENLY TRANQUILITY (I've referred to that work quite often in recent blog posts).

However, the high point of this year's festival came after the Becker talk. I and the small handful of other people lucky enough to have gotten tickets for the event—it sold out very quickly—got to spend a little over ninety minutes with the Chinese novelist Mo Yan (莫言) and his English translator, Howard Goldblatt. A recent photo of Yan is at the top of this blog post.

Mo Yan is arguably China's greatest living novelist. This year he won the Newman Prize and last year, he was the first mainland Chinese writer invited to give the keynote address at the Modern Language Association's annual convention (he addressed the 2008 San Francisco meeting). And Yan is the one mainland China writer who has a decent shot at winning the Nobel Prize for literature. Thus seeing Yan in person and listening to him discuss his work has to rank as one of the high points of my ongoing China adventure.

Mo Yan is best known for his early big, sprawling epic novel (史诗著作) RED SORGHUM (红高粱), mainly because it was made into film by Zhang Yimou (张艺谋) starring Gong Li (巩俐) (see the above photos). Most of his subsequent novels have been translated into English, including THE REPUBLIC OF WINE (酒国), THE GARLIC BALLADS (天堂蒜台之歌), BIG BREASTS AND WIDE HIPS (丰乳肥臀) and LIFE AND DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT (生死疲劳).

The first two novels translated after RED SORGHUM, THE GARLIC BALLADS and THE REPUBLIC OF WINE, were relatively short satires and lacked the former's historical breath. By contrast, BIG BREAST AND WIDE HIPS, whose story focuses on a family of women, is a generally unflattering romp through the first half of 20th Century China. Yan's latest novel to be translated, LIFE AND DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT, does the same thing for the New China.

Yan spent nearly all of his time discussing LIFE AND DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT and the novel Goldblatt is currently translating, THE SANDALWOOD TORTURE (檀香刑) (Yan finished writing the latter novel in 2001). Like most of Yan's fiction, both novels are set in his Shandong Province hometown of Gaomi (高密). However, the second one is more historical, with the story taking place during the Boxer (义和拳) Rebellion.

The Boxer Rebellion originated in Shandong (山东) Province and was sparked by resistance to German colonization of this area. One well known legacy of German imperialism in China is the famous Qingdao (青岛) beer. The Germans built the Qingdao brewery in that city, along with many lovely old buildings, including the Governor's Mansion, several churches (教堂), and a number of villas (别墅). This architecture, along with the beer, beautiful seaside, and relatively clear air, make Qingdao one of China's most attractive cities.

In addition to bringing beer to China, the Germans also built a railroad (铁路) from Qingdao to Jinan (济南), which is the capital of and largest city in Shandong Province. Yan talked about why the peasants became very angry about the construction of the railroad. His interesting and frank comments differed greatly from what the history textbooks (历史课本) here have to say about this matter.

Yan said that the peasants struggled against the Germans not because they opposed imperialism—indeed, many had no concept of what that meant—but because the railroad was built through graveyards (墓地). It was thus seen as disturbing the area's “feng shui” (风水) or harmony, both with nature and the people's dead ancestors. So the Germans would build the railroad during the day, only to have much of that construction dismantled by the peasants during the night.

Yan noted that the peasants were initially terrified of the railroad. In particular, they could not fathom how such heavy object like a train (火车) could move so fast on its own. The farmers wondered what kind food the train ate, while the area's bandits were convinced that the engines (发动机) of the locomotives (火车头) were filled with gold (金).

The Germans brutally suppressed this uprising, torturing and then cruelly executing its ringleaders, much like they did to the rebelling Nanimbian tribesmen in Southwest Africa during the so-called “Hottentot War”. Interestingly enough, I vaguely remember reading in the excellent German newspaper, DIE ZEIT, that the latter effort was led by close relative of the future Nazi Reichsmarschall Herman Göring.

But to be fair and even-handed here, every other colonial power during this time behaved in a similar fashion. During the Boer War, for example, the British herded Boer women and children into squalid concentration camps, where large numbers perished from disease and inadequate food. And the Americans slaughtered a quarter million Filipinos in surpressing the struggle for independence that broke out in Philippines during the Spanish American War's not so splendid aftermath (William Hay referred to the conflict as “That Splendid Little War”—a sick joke if there ever was one!!).

Of course, graphic violence and torture is nothing new to Yan's fiction. In RED SORGHUM, one of the main characters, the leader of one of the anti-Japanese guerilla groups, is flayed alive by the Japanese (this scene comes near the end of Zhang Yimou's film adaptation of the book). However, in this newer novel, the theme of execution (处决) plays a much more central role. At least during his talk, Yan stated emphatically that he wanted to create characters that would make his novel a meditation on the morality of capital punishment.

After making this comment, Yan talked at length about the history of executions in China, especially how they could be seen as theatrical events. In particular, the criminals who were about to be executed were expected to perform. Yan stated that such performances mainly consisted of reciting two lines from Song Dynasty (宋朝) operas. One went, “If you cut off my head, it will only leave scars on both sides”, while the other one was, “In 20 years, I'll be another great guy!”

According to Yan, if the condemned uttered these lines with the requisite sang foid, they would receive a big round of applause from the crowd. Yan went on to say that while a lot is known about the behavior of crowds and the condemned at public executions, the executioners have largely been ignored, adding that he wondered whether or not they had “bad dreams” (不好的梦). Thus one of main characters in THE SANDALWOOD TORTURE is an executioner (刽子手).

I suspect that very few of China's current executioners actually have bad dreams over their work. At least the one interviewed in Sang Ye's terrific compilation of interviews, CHINA CANDID: THE PEOPLE ON THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC, seemed to have no qualms about his job (that interview is entitled “Parting Shot”). Indeed, the very matter of fact and clinical way he describes the execution process is really chilling and disturbing, probably far more so than Yan's prose in THE SANDALWOOD TORTURE, which Goldblatt at one point called “stomach-turning”.

I should say here that CHINA CANDID really is a must-read book. All of the interviews in it are very illuminating, dealing with a wide range of issues, including migrant workers, parents organizing over their abducted children, the problems of the handicapped, and the winners from China's economic reforms. But be warned, a few of the conversations are, like the one with the executioner, very unsettling to say the least. This is particularly true regarding the interview with a Shenzhen hooker, who uses extremely frank and graphic language in talking about her work.

I thus expect that once THE SANDALWOOD TORTURE has been translated, people outside of China will either love it or hate it. Not only does it have the “stomach turning” descriptions of executions, but all of this is juxtaposed against a love story!

The same can also certainly be said for the most recent Mo Yan novel to be translated into English, LIFE AND DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT. This story is set in the Cultural Revolution (文化大革命) and decade that preceded it. When he wasn't discussing THE SANDALWOOD TORTURE, Yan talked about this book, particularly how it was rooted in his childhood memories of that period of time.

One of the novel's main characters is based on a fellow who had a cart in Yan's old village. Yan said that this man was called “Blueface” because of a peculiar birthmark on his face. He added that Blueface was a very stubborn individual, citing a Chinese saying to describe him, “Stone in the outhouse, hard and stinky” (at least that's how the translator at the talk put it; none of my Chinese friends have been able to give me the Mandarin equivalent).

Yan stated that unlike everyone else in the village, Blueface didn't belong to any collective unit. He and his family thus faced a lot of social pressure from the other villagers, particularly during the Cultural Revolution. At that point, this pressure became so great that Blueface hanged himself. Yan said that he opposed Blueface as a child, but now thinks that this man did the right thing in resisting the pressure to conform.

Yan further noted that during this period, the village chief exercised very tight control over the villager's lives. Farmers went to the fields to work in the morning after the village chief rang a bell. And the farmers could not go to the market without the chief's permission. As Yan put it, discipline in the collective was very much like that of a military unit.

Today, of course, things are completely different and rural residents enjoy much personal freedom in going about their day-to-day lives. This important change is frequently overlooked or downplayed by western critics of China, including several of my own friends back in the states.

The potagonist (主人公) of LIFE AND DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT is a landowner who is executed in the 1950s. Yan stated that many mistakes were made during this period and that lots innocent people were persecuted. In the novel, the landowner appeals to the lord of the underworld to get reborn as a human being so he can return to the village and take his revenge.

However, over the next 50 years, he is instead reborn as four animals—pig (猪), dog (狗), horse (马), and monkey (猴子)—before being reborn as a human being. And when he is finally reborn as a human being, he is given an abnormally large head (头)! Yan noted that this death and rebirth form a circle, further adding that Chinese peasant life is also like a circle. He sees the changes in China through the eyes of different animals and in this latest novel, animals often take over the narrative from human beings.

This is not the first time in Yan's fiction that animals have assumed a quasi-human nature. One of the most violent and disturbing scenes in RED SORGHUM is the attack mounted by a pack of wild dogs against the small village at the center of the novel's story. In this particular passage, the leader of the dog pack is turned into a clever and astute field commander who outwits the villagers.

Yan stated that his fascination with animals and the role they play in his fiction is very much rooted in his childhood. He was kicked out of school during the 5th grade for smoking a cigarette. Yan said that he then spent most of his adolescence tending farm animals. In fact, Yan noted that during this period, he had far more interaction with animals than he did with humans and barely remembers his classmates. He added that this made him appreciate just how clever some of these animals are, especially pigs.

During the Cultural Revolution, Yan became a farmer, but then joined the People's Liberation Army (PLA; 人民解放军) in 1976. He first served in a cultural affairs unit and was subsequently appointed to teach literature at the PLA cultural Academy in 1981. There he began writing fiction and the rest, as they say, is history!

According to a statement I shagged off of the internet from Howard Goldblatt, LIFE IS AND DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT “puts a human (and frequently bestial) face on the revolution and is replete with the dark humor, metafictional insertions, and fantasies that Yan's readers have come to expect and enjoy.” And the NEW YORK TIMES says that LIFE AND DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT is a “wildly visionary and creative novel”.

So perhaps this book will help Yan win a Nobel Prize for literature. In any case, I'm looking forward to reading the English translation of 生死疲劳 (LIFE AND DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT) in the not too distant future and certainly hope to someday read it, along with most of Yan's other work, in Chinese (I have read RED SORGHUM and his collection of short stories, also translated by Goldblatt, SHIFOU, YOU’LL DO ANYTIHING FOR A LAUGH).

The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.

莫言 (mo4yan2). This is his “pen name,”which means “not to speak”. His real name is管谟业 (guan3mo2ye4).
读书节 (du2shu1jie2). “读书” also means “to study” or “to study a book”, while “节” is the Mandarin word for “festival”.
史诗著作 (shi3shi1zhu4zuo4). According to my very literary Chinese friend, Lu Hongyan (路红艳), the Chinese wouldn't regard RED SORGHUM as an “epic” work. That honor would be reserved for a classic like DREAM OF RED CHAMBERS (红楼梦; hong2lou2meng4).
红高粱 (hong2gao1liang5). “红” means “red” and “高粱” is the word for “sorghum”.
酒国 (jiu3guo2). “酒” is the general Chinese term for alcoholic beverage, while “国” is a shortened form of the word for “nation” or “kingdom”, “国家” (guo2jia1).
天堂蒜台之歌 (tian1tang2suan3tai2zhi1ge1). “蒜” is the shortened form of garlic, but when put with “台” or, less frequently “苔” (tai2; this word can mean “moss”), it's another vegetable. “之” is a shortened form of the word “between” or “among” (之间; zhi1jian1), while “歌” is the noun “song”.
丰乳肥臀 (feng1ru3fei2tun2). “丰” means “bountiful” and “乳” is shortened form of the word for “breast”, or “乳房” (ru3fang2). “肥” is the noun “fat”, so the Chinese expression for losing weight, “减肥” (jian3fei2) means “lose fat”. Mandarin has a different character for the adjective “fat”, which is “胖” (pang4). “臀” doesn't actually mean “hips”, but is instead the noun “buttocks” or “ass”. So literally translated, this novel's title is “Bountiful Breasts, Fat Ass”.
生死疲劳 (sheng1si3pi2lao2). “生” is a shortened form of the word for “life” (生活; sheng1huo2) and “死” means “death”. “疲劳” functions both as the adjective “weary” and the noun “fatigue”.
檀香刑 (tan2xiang1xing2). “檀香” menas “sandalwood”, while “刑” is the word for “punishment”.
义和拳 (yi4he2quan2). The real Chinese name for the Boxers is the Society of Righteous Fists; “义和” means “righteous” and “拳” functions as three nouns, namely “fist”, “boxing”, and “pugilism”. The character for “hand” (手; shou3) at the bottom of this character provides a clue about its meaning.
教堂 (jiao4tang2).
别墅 (bie2shu4).
铁路 (tie3lu4). This literally means “iron (铁) road/path (路)”.
历史课本 (li4shi3ke4ben3). “历史” is the word for “history,” while “课本” is the word for “textbook”.
墓地 (mu4di4).
火车 (huo3che1). This combination literally means “fire (火) vehicle” (车).
发动机 (fa1dong4ji1).
火车头 (huo3che1tou2). Literally translated, this means “train (火车) head (头)”. This “头” is human/animal anatomy “head”, not to someone in charge of an organization or task. 金 (jin1).
处决 (chu3jue2). This word is the noun form of the verb “execute(d)”, which is 处死(了) (chu3si3[le5])
宋朝 (Song4chao2). “朝” is the word for “dynasty”.
不好的梦 (bu4hao3de5meng4). “不好” means “bad/no good”, while “梦” is the word for dreams. The Chinese word for “nightmare” is 噩梦 (e4meng4). “噩” on its own is “shocking”.
刽子手 (gui4zi5shou3). “死刑执行人” (si3xing4zhi2xing2ren2) is a more formal, written term for these individuals; “死刑” means “death (死) penalty/punishment (刑)”.
文化大革命 (wen2hua4da4ge2ming4). “文化” means “culture/cultural”, “大” “big”, and “革命” “revolution”.
主人公 (zhu3ren2gong1). The Chinese word for “antagonist” is “反面人物” and the “反” in this word means “to oppose” or “rebel”. An ordinary character in a work of fiction is a “人物” (ren2wu4), while a “cast of characters” is a “人物表”. And a “minor character” is a “次要人物” (ci4yao4ren2wu4). Finally, the word for “role” is “角色” (jue2se4).
猪 (zhu1).
狗 (gou3).
马 (ma3).
猴子 (hou3zi5).
人民解放军 (ren2min2jie3fang4jun1). “人民” stands for “people”, “解放” “liberation”, and “军” for “army”. Thus the Chinese name for the famous World War II 8th Route Army is 八 (8) 路 (route) 军 (army) (ba1lu4jun1). “Military” is “军事” (jun1shi4) or, more literally, “army (军) matters/affairs (事)”.