| Chapter : | Introduction: Hunger and Loneliness: Mo Yan’s Muses in Becoming a Writer |
|
|
This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.
two hundred or so laborers and forced Mo Yan to admit his error in front of Mao Zedong’s portrait. Down on his knees in front of the portrait of the then supreme authority, the young Mo Yan stammered: “Chairman Mao … I stole a radish … I committed a crime … I deserve ten thousand deaths…” (
). When he went home, a cruel beating by his parents awaited him.13 The reason for this beating, according to Mo Yan, was that
This episode was later written into his novella “Toumingde hongluobo” (
) [A transparent red radish] and the short story “Kuhe” (
) [Dry river].
The experience of hunger, a significant motif in Mo Yan’s writing, was his major motivation to become a writer. Mo Yan experienced Mao Zedong’s Three Red Banners and the three years of great famine that resulted from this political movement. Formulated in 1958, the Three Red Banners comprised the General Line for Socialist Construction, the Great Leap Forward, and the People’s Communes. To meet the ambitions of Mao, rural cadres all over the country overstated their achievements: