| Chapter : | Introduction: Hunger and Loneliness: Mo Yan’s Muses in Becoming a Writer |
|
|
his luck. He worked extremely hard, only to find after much preparation that he did not in fact qualify to take the exam—he was by then one year over the age limit. Deeply disappointed, Mo Yan started contributing fiction to literary magazines. Unfortunately, there were no signs of success in the first few years.
Despite the fact that Mo Yan was unable to sit for the university entrance examination, the army leaders still believed that he was more capable than many other soldiers and assigned him to teach in a literacy campaign. At the same time, he was also appointed to work as a librarian. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Mo Yan read voraciously and continued writing fiction. In 1981 his debut short story “Chunye yu feifei” (
) [The incessant rain on a spring night] was published in Lian chi (
) [Lotus pond], a literary magazine based in Hebei (
) Province; the story is about a newlywed wife who misses her solider husband. After that, Mo Yan published several short stories here and there, but none of them seemed to evoke any response among readers until 1983, when Lotus Pond printed one of his stories, “Minjian yinyue” (
) [Folk Music], which attracted some attention in literary circles. In crafting this romance between a young blind musician and the proprietress of a restaurant, Mo Yan abandoned the more traditional realistic forms and tried to create a misty—even absurd—aura. This piece is an example of his earliest experimentation.
The year 1984 marked another important turning point in Mo Yan’s life. The PLA Art Institute, the army’s highest art institution, decided to form a literary department and enroll students. When Mo Yan heard the news, the deadline to sign up had already passed, so he took with him several published stories and went to see Xu Huaizhong (
), a famous army writer and the new department’s first chairperson. Xu was particularly impressed by “Folk Music” and allowed him to take the entrance examination, promising to enroll him even if he failed. Fortunately, Mo Yan validated the faith that Xu had placed in him: he passed the examination with a high score. Finally, Mo Yan was admitted to university. “Chairman Xu Huaizhong changed my fate!” (
) Mo Yan has written.17 During his first semester at the