introduction
no writer in recent memory has contributed more to the imagination of historical space inchina or a reevaluation of chinese society, past and present, than mo yan, whose redsorghum changed the literary landscape when it was published in 1987, 1 and was the firstchinese film to reap critical and box-office rewards in the west. 2 in the process of probingchina’s myths, official and popular, and some of the darker corners of chinese society, moyan has become the most controversial writer in china; loved by readers in many countries,he is the bane of china’s official establishment, which has stopped the sale of more than oneof his novels, only to relent when they are acclaimed outside the countryborn in 1955 into a peasant family in northern china, where a hardscrabble existence wasthe norm, mo yan received little formal schooling before being sent out into the fields to tendlivestock and then into factories during the disastrous decade of the cultural revolution(1966-1976). his hometown, in quasi-fictional northeast gaomi county, is the setting forvirtually all his novels; the stories he heard as a child from his grandfather and other relativesstoked his fertile imagination, and have found an outlet in a series of big, lusty, and alwayscontroversial novels, the earliest of which, in a delicious quirk of irony, were written whilemo yan was serving as an officer in the people’s liberation army.
mo yan styles himself as a writer of realist, often historical fiction, which is certainly true,as far as it goes. like the latin american creators of magic realism (whose works mo yanhas read and enjoyed, but, he insists, have exerted no influence on his own writing), hestretches the boundaries of “realism” and “historicism” in new, and frequently maligned,directions. official histories and recorded “facts” are of little interest to this writer, whoroutinely blends folk beliefs, bizarre animal imagery, and a variety of imaginative narrativetechniques with historical realities — national and local, official and popular — to createunique and uniquely satisfying literature, writing of such universally engaging themes andvisceral imagery that it easily crosses national borders.
following the success of red sorghum, a fictional autobiography of three generations ofgaomi township freedom fighters during the war of resistance against japan (1937-1945),mo yan wrote (in less than a month) a political, if not polemical, novel in the wake of a 1987incident that pitted impoverished garlic farmers against the mendacity of corrupt officials.
and yet the unmistakable rage that permeates the pages of the garlic ballads (1988; 1995) istempered by traces of satire, which will blossom in later works, and a lacerating parody ofofficial discourse. viewed by the government as likely to stir up emotions during the vastpopular demonstrations in 1989 that led to the tiananmen massacre, the novel was pulledfrom the shelves for several months. that the peasant uprising was crushed, both in the realworld and in mo yan’s novel, surely gave the leaders of china little comfort as they facedstudents, workers, and ordinary citizens in the square where a million frenzied citizens oncehailed the vision of chairman mao.
mo yan’s next offering was thirteen steps (1989), a heavily sardonic novel whose insane,caged protagonist begs for chalk from his listeners to write out a series of bizarre tales andmiraculous happenings; in the process, the reader is caught up in the role of mediator. innarrative terms, it is a tour de force, a tortuous journey into the mind of contemporary china.
in a speech given at denver’s the tattered cover bookstore in 2000, mo yan made thefollowing claim: u i can boast that while many contemporary chinese writers can producegood books of their own, no one but me could write a novel like the republic of wine”
(1992; 2000). 3 compared by critics to the likes of lawrence stern’s tristram shandy, 4 thisswiftian satire chronicles the adventures of a government detective who is sent out toinvestigate claims that residents of a certain provincial city are raising children for food, inorder to satisfy the jaded palates of local officials. the narrative, interrupted by increasinglyoutlandish short stories by one of the novel’s least sympathetic characters, graduallyincorporates “mo yan” into its unfolding drama, until all the disparate story lines merge in adarkly carnivalesque ending. indeed, no other contemporary novelist could have written thissatirical masterpiece, and few could have gotten away with such blatant attacks on china’slove affair with exotic foods and predilection for excessive consumption, not to mentionegregious exploitation of the peasantry.
as the new millennium approached, mo yan once again undertook to inscribe hisidiosyncratic interpretation of china’s modern history, this time incorporating nearly all of thetwentieth century, a bloody century in china by any standard. had he been a writer of lesserrenown, one bereft of the standing, talent, and international visibility that served as aprotective shield, he might well not have been able to withstand the withering criticism thatfollowed the 1996 publication of his biggest novel to date (nearly a half million words in theoriginal version, a “book as thick as a brick,” in his own words), big breasts and wide hips.
this novel, with its eroticism and, in the eyes of some, inaccurate portrayal of modernchina’s political landscape, would have sparked considerable controversy had it simplyappeared in the bookstores. but when, after its serialized publication (1995) in a major literarymagazine, dajia, it was awarded the first dajia prize of 100,000 renminbi (roughly $12,000),the outcry from conservative critics was immediate and shrill. the judges for thisnongovernmental prize had the following to say about a novel that its supporters have called a“somber historical epic”:
big breasts and wide hips is a sumptuous literary feast with a simple, straightforward title. in it, withundaunted perseverance and passion, mo yan has narrated the historical evolution of chinese society in awork that covers nearly the entire twentieth century…. it is a literary masterpiece in the author’s distinctivestyle.
the judges took note of the author’s skillful alternation of first-and third-person narrationand his use of flashback and other deft writing techniques. as for the arresting title, mo yanwrote in a 1995 essay that the “creative urge came from his deep admiration for his motherand … the inspiration [for] the title was derived from his experience of seeing an ancientstone sculpture of a female figure with protruding breasts and buttocks.” 5 that did not still hiscritics, for whom concerns over his evocation of the female anatomy were of lesserconsequence than his treatment of china’s modern history.
while the novel opens on the eve of the sino-japanese war (1936), with the birth of thecentral male character, shangguan jintong, and his twin sister, the narration actually begins intime (chapter 2) at the turn of the century, in the wake of the failed boxer rebellion, in whichtroops from eight foreign nations crushed an indigenous, anti-foreign rebellion and solidifiedtheir presence in china. as in mo yan’s earlier novel, red sorghum, the central, and in manyways defining, events occur during the eight years of war with japan, all on chinese soil. formo yan, the earlier decades, while not peaceful by any means, are notable for personal, ratherthan national, events. it is the time of mother’s childhood, marriage, and the birth of her firstseven children — all daughters and all by men other than her sterile husband. the nationalimplications become clear when mother’s only son, jintong, arrives, the offspring of swedishmalory, the alien “other.”
the bulk of the novel then takes the reader through six turbulent decades, from the sino-japanese war, in which two defending factions (mao’s communists and chiang kai-shek’snationalists) fought one another almost as much as they fought, and usually succumbed to,the japanese. it is here that mo yan has particularly angered his critics, in that he has createdheroes and turncoats that defy conventional views, resulting in a “sycophantic, shamelesswork that turns history upside down, fabricates lies, and glorifies the japanese fascists and thelandlord restoration corps [groups of landed individuals who went over to nationalist-controlled areas after the war when their land was redistributed by the communists],” in thewords of one critic. of the several male figures in the novel, excluding the foreigner, whose“potency” cannot save him and stigmatizes his offspring, one is a patriot-turned-collaborator,another is a leader of nationalist forces, and two are communists (a commander and asoldier); all marry one or more of mother’s daughters, but only one, the nationalist, earnsmother’s praise: “he’s a bastard,” she says, “but he’s also a man worthy of the name. in dayspast, a man like that would come around once every eight or ten years. i’m afraid we’ve seenthe last of his kind.”
big breasts and wide hips is, of course, fiction, and while it deals with historical events(selectively, to be sure), it is a work that probes and reveals broader aspects of society andhumanity, those that transcend or refute specific occurrences or canonized politicalinterpretations of history. following japan’s defeat in asia in 1945, china slipped into abloody civil war between mao’s and chiang’s forces, ending in 1949 with a communistvictory and the creation of the people’s republic of china. unfortunately for the shangguanfamily, as for citizens throughout the country, peace and stability proved to be as elusive in“new china” as in the old. the first seventeen years of the people’s republic witnessed abloody involvement in the korean war (1950-53), a period of savage instances of score-settling and political realignments, the disastrous “great leap forward,” which led to threeyears of famine that claimed millions of lives, and the cultural revolution. in defiance ofmore standard historical fiction in china, which tends to foreground major historical events,in mo yan’s novel they are mere backdrops to the lives of jintong, his surviving sisters, hisnieces and nephews, and, of course, mother. it is here that the significance of shangguanjintong’s oedipal tendencies and impotence become apparent. 6 in a relentlessly unflatteringportrait of his male protagonist, mo yan draws attention to what he sees as a regression of thehuman species and a dilution of the chinese character (echoing sentiments first encounteredin red sorghum); in other words, a failed patriarchy. ultimately, it is the strength of characterof (most, but not all) the women that lends hope to the author’s gloomy vision.
in the post-mao years (mao died in 1976), jintong’s deterioration occurs in the context ofnational reforms and an economic boom. weaned of the breast, finally, he represents, to someat least, a “manifestation of chinese intellectuals’ anxiety over the country’s potency in themodern world.” 7 whatever he may symbolize, he remains a member of one of the mostintriguing casts of characters in fiction, in a novel about which mo yan himself has said: “ifyou like, you can skip my other novels [i wouldn’t recommend it — tr.], but you must readbig breasts and wide hips. in it i wrote about history, war, politics, hunger, religion, love,and sex.” 8
big breasts and wide hips was first published in book form by writers publishing house(1996); a taiwan edition (hong-fan) appeared later the same year. a shortened edition wasthen published by china workers publishing house in 2003. the current translation wasundertaken from a further shortened, computer-generated manuscript supplied by the author.
some changes and rearrangements were effected during the translation and editing process, allwith the approval of the author. as translator, i have been uncommonly fortunate to havebeen aided along the way by the author, by my frequent co-translator, sylvia li-chun lin, 9and by our publisher and editor, dick seaver.
