How I Read Mo Yan's Oeuvre
《我读莫言》

The first Mo Yan novel that I read was Red Sorghum at the end of 1980s. I expected to meet a much more senior person, since his writings mostly involve in old stories happening in Anti-Japanese War, Revolution of 1911 (which overthrew the Qing Dynasty) and so on, but he actually turned out to a little bit older than me. The question is how could he have such rich experience and unbelievable imagination?
我读第一次读到莫言，是他的《红高粱》，大约是在20世纪80年代末。那时我想它应是上了年纪的作家，因为他知道那么多过去的故事，如抗日战争，辛亥革命等。后来见了面才知，他其实比我大不了多少。然而，他的经历和想象何以如此丰富？
I was amazed by his ability to tell a story and the peculiar way of his narration. Using ridicule and sarcasm, Mo Yan knows very well how to write unconventionally, philosophically as well as quite consistently. Taking a typical passage in his Red Sorghum as an example, "The autumn winds are rather chilly even on a perfect sunny day, while white clouds float in the tile-blue sky and cast full purple shadows onto the sorghum fields below. Teams of scarlet fighters shuttle among the sorghum stalks to interlace human network during a slip in time when decades seem like a moment. There were killings, plundering, loyal defense played out on the stage of life by these brave men who dwarfed us unfilial descendants occupying this land. Progress may have been made, but I do have a nagging sense of our species' regression".
我印象最深的是，是他忒能讲故事，且叙事的方式很特别。他经常是一气呵成，不循规蹈矩，又颇带自我嘲讽与哲理意味。例如，《红高粱》中有一段："秋风苍凉，阳光很旺，瓦蓝的天上游荡着一朵朵丰满的云，高粱上滑动着一朵朵丰满白云的紫红色影子。一队队暗红色的人在高粱棵子里穿梭拉网，几十年如一日。他们杀人越货，精忠报国，他们演出郭一幕幕英勇悲壮的舞剧，使我们这些活着的不肖子孙相形见绌，在进步的同时，我真切地感到种的退化"。
I later on found out that Mo was born in a farmer's family, and dropped out of school to be a cowherd at Grade Five. He was a bookworm early in his life, and when there were hardly any books to be found, he could read a Xinhua Dictionary from cover to cover. Having read a great number of classical Chinese novels and heard many folktales, especially under the spell of pantheism of Qi-lu culture, he developed his imaginary world that is both familiar and strange, formulating his unique magic realism, which eventually made him a Nobel Laureate in literature in 2012.
后来我知道，莫言出生在一农民家庭，小学五年级都没有上完，就辍学放牛了。那时他最大的特点是爱读书，在书荒的时代，他甚至来回诵读了一本仅有的《新华字典》。后来，他又读了大量的中国古典小说，加上喜欢听民间故事，特别是受齐鲁文化"泛种论"的影响，使他对周围既熟悉又陌生的环境充满了奇特的想象，形成了他奇特的魔幻现实主义写作风格，最终于2012年赢得了诺贝尔文学奖。
Originally named Guan Moye, he adopted "Mo Yan"—meaning "don't speak" in Chinese—as his pseudonym to remind himself of the lesson from a loose tongue in his childhood. However, he is extremely audacious in depicting scenes, including sexual ones, sometimes quite vividly in his writings, to make up the loss, as he put it.
他原名是管谟业，用"莫言"这个笔名是为了告诫自己要少说为佳，因为小的时候祸从口出，吃了大亏。但他在自己的作品中却胆大妄言，甚至"色胆包天"，写得非常之淋漓，用他的话说，也算是一种弥补。
Mo Yan believes that "Literature and art ought never to be a means of eulogizing life; rather, they have to expose the dark side of life and injustice". In his view, human nature is multifaceted, as the kind-hearted have their shortcomings and the evil-minded have their merits, which should all be reflected in a masterpiece. I can certainly sense this kind of complexity and justice in his oeuvre, particularly in A Transparent Radish, Family Stories of Red Sorghum, White Dog Swing, The Republic of Wine, Big Breasts And Wide Hips, Sandalwood Penalty, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, Frog and so on.
莫言认为，"文学艺术永远不是唱赞歌的工具，而是应该暴露黑暗，揭示不公正"。在他看来，人性是多面的，好人身上也有缺陷，坏人身上亦有优点，优秀作品便应体现这些。我在他的作品中，特别是《透明的红萝卜》、《宏观了家族》、《白狗秋千架》、《酒国》、《丰乳肥臀》、《檀香刑》、《生死疲劳》、《蛙》中，读到了人的复杂性及作者的正义感。
As we all believe that literature is after all a language art, Mo Yan's language is very artistic, saturated with the flavor of Shandong dialect. As he once put it, "An innovative writer should spare no efforts and go to devious endless lengths to enrich the national language". Indeed, he reveals the hypocrisy and murkiest aspect of life with an ill-disguised delight, portraying various images of symbolic weight inadvertently.
文学，毕竟是语言的艺术。莫言的语言也颇具特色，他糅合了大量的山东土语，别有风味。正如他所说的，"一个真正的文学家，应该千方百计地丰富本民族的语言"。同时，他又用一种难以掩饰的戏谑感来揭示虚伪和黑暗，从容地塑造了种种富有含义的艺术形象。