He is a contemporary Chinese writer, vice chairman of the Chinese Writers Association, and is currently a professor at Beijing Normal University and the director of the International Writing Center. The first Chinese Nobel Prize winner in literature.
2023 Cultural Contributor of the Year Mo Yan.
Reasons for the award. He is a writer who has been writing for decades and a teacher who strives to promote future generations. He is a Nobel laureate in literature and a philanthropist who has devoted himself to public welfare. He uses literature to construct virtual worlds, and he also cares about people and things in the real world. He still retains his creative impulse and his enthusiasm for communicating with young people. He has never been complacent, always open and curious about the world, and uses his actions to keep literature alive.
On Tuesday morning, "Two Bricks Ink News"** issued the latest push. Mo Yan glanced at his mobile phone every once in a while, and after more than four hours, the reading volume jumped to "100,000+". Mo Yan smiled. Now, it is rare to see Mo Yanxin's books in bookstores, but his creation is still diligent, but he has moved to ***, using calligraphy and poetry, he can reach an audience of more than 100,000 in half a day.
It's also a kind of creation. One afternoon in November 2023, Mo Yan told China News Weekly from his studio in the west of Beijing. In normal times, he writes calligraphy here and deals with matters related to public welfare. That night, he was going to the Beijing People's Art Theater to see the play "The Quiet Don", which was eight hours long and ran for two nights, four hours each night.
"The Quiet Don River" is his favorite literary classic, and the theme of war is also the complex of this writer from the military, and it is the theme of the Anti-Japanese War created with a new penmanship and literary texture** "Red Sorghum", in the mid-to-late 1980s, pushed him into the field of vision of the international literary community in one fell swoop. Subsequently, his pen flew for more than 20 years, depicting the madness and absurdity, struggle and success of Chinese history and reality.
In 2012, Mo Yan became the first Chinese writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, a young Nobel laureate who was 68 years old this year. He speaks endlessly, and occasionally in a flash of inspiration, he gives the other person a wonderful metaphor. "I'm on the same face as them (the young students) in the coal mine," he said with sudden excitement, his eyes lit up, and his smile spread across his face, "Everybody is mining coal, and we all have to dig forward." ”
The one who holds the lamp. Mo Yan became a teacher. In 2013, he became the director of the International Writing Center at Beijing Normal University, his alma mater. After retiring from the Chinese Academy of Arts in 2018, he returned to Beijing Normal University full-time to devote more energy to education, and now he has five doctoral students with him. His colleagues include Yu Hua, Su Tong, Xi Chuan, Ouyang Jianghe, and Zhang Qinghua.
At the International Writing Center of Beijing Normal University, Mo Yan, Yu Hua and other colleagues held a "Famous Teacher Writing Guidance Workshop", inviting a group of top writers and editors-in-chief of literary journals to revise students' ** and poems on the spot. Nearly forty years ago, Mo Yan on the threshold of thirty years old wrote the novella ** "Transparent Carrot", when he was studying in the Literature Department of the People's Liberation Army Academy of Arts, and had just published a few articles in Hebei local literary journals**, he was still a nobody, but the literary world held two seminars because of this **. One was presided over by Xu Huaizhong, director of the Department of Military Art and Literature, and the other was presided over by Feng Mu, editor-in-chief of "Chinese Writers" and leader of the Writers' Association. Now, he has also become a senior, setting up a stage and holding a lamp for young people.
Mo Yan also wrote dramas. In 2023, he will release a new book after a long absence, not **, but a script. Around the Spring Festival in 2022, Zhang Heping, the old dean of Beijing Renyi, and Ren Ming, the dean at the time, visited Mo Yan and said to him, it's time to write a play for us, right?A long time ago, Mo Yan told him an idea to write a story about escape.
In the future, I will at least focus most of my efforts on drama creation. Mo Yan told China Newsweek about his planned turn. In front of Shakespeare's bronze statue, he vowed to become a playwright for the rest of his life. A joking version is that he said to his fellow Yu Hua and Su Tong, so that I can distinguish it from you, I will become a playwright, and you, write **.
He did public welfare, and after donating 1.25 million yuan in manuscript fees, he wrote the "Baifu" auction to raise tens of millions of children with congenital heart disease in the western region. He interacts with young people and is proficient in the use of memes and memes. He goes on variety shows, sees old friends, and contributes jokes. He traveled the mountains and rivers, and wrote poems and letters everywhere he went. He held calligraphy exhibitions and continued to publish books, including calligraphy and poetry. Friends and netizens pointed out that he made mistakes in his calligraphy — mostly related to traditional Chinese characters — and he would seriously admit his mistakes and write a "review": "I promise I will never repeat this mistake again." ”
In the eleventh year of winning the Nobel Prize, literature is no longer the only thing that matters.
A small grievance.
In the years after the Nobel Prize, what Mo Yan has experienced, rather than listening to him, it is better to see how he writes. After 2012, his ** new work was only collected and published in 2020, and a collection of short stories "The Late Bloomer" was published. Four of the twelve articles in the collection were written before the award, and the rest were new works after the award. The character of the award-winning writer appears in the story more than once, both fictional and real.
In the article of the same name, "I" returned to my hometown after winning the award, and "Yellow Corn" - who wouldn't think of "Red Sorghum" - was changed into a popular TV series, and my hometown became a tourist destination, and my former residence was also developed into a scenic spot. Fa Xiao Jiang Tianxia diligently saddled the horse before and after, hoping that the writer would develop a tourist attraction platform for him. Around the writer's return to his hometown, all kinds of people staged absurd farces - how similar all this is to Mo Yan's experience.
In "Late Bloomers", Mo Yan wrote, continue to be a late bloomer. The so-called late maturation is to keep a certain distance from the worldly and utilitarian. But in his **, there is always a consistent compassion for the common people.
There are those who are exposed to light, and there are also those who slander.
After Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize, someone found out the plot in "Plump Breasts and Fat Buttocks" and said that Shangguan Jintong was a mixed-race child born to a Swedish missionary and a Chinese woman, you see, in order to win the Nobel Prize awarded by the Swedes, he had ulterior motives to show them favor as early as 1995. The fact is that the Swedes were the most likely missionaries to come to the Jiaodong Peninsula, which is a historical fact. The denigration of writers is often so ridiculous.
He is very open about the misunderstanding of readers. "You want to praise, he thinks you're criticizing;It's obviously a kind of criticism of the depth of love and pain, and he thinks that you are deliberately smearing. There is no need to explain, it has to do with age, origin, position, and it all have to do with it, and you will feel very aggrieved at first, and then you will slowly get used to it. ”
But some deliberate slander and attack, he can't do to completely ignore. In the face of attacks and criticism, Mo Yan never fights back openly, but he responds in his own way. For example, in 2019, he published the poem "Dumpling Song", which portrayed a literature professor Professor Hou and writer Lao Mo, and the students relayed Professor Hou's criticism of Lao Mo's ugly sound: "Professor Hou spent two classes discussing with us Lao Mo's ugly face that damaged the national character. ”
It's because I won the Nobel Prize, and all the firepower is concentrated on me. It's my honor for me to block guns and arrows for everyone. "Maybe I'll be relieved to wait for the next Chinese writer to win the Nobel Prize." ”
But after all, it is a mortal body. Once the student Jiao Dian went to Mo Yan's office, Mo Yan suddenly told her, we have been friends for so many years, I don't know why he spread rumors and framed her. A literary insider has just launched a story-making criticism of Mo Yan. At that moment, Jiao Dian felt sad, "People are not old and will not be harmed, and they will not be harmed because they are successful." Hurt is always hurt. ”
Before meeting Mo Yan, Jiao Dian guessed based on his overwhelming writing style that this should be a very enthusiastic person. After getting acquainted, she found that although Mo Yan was kind, he always asked her if she was eating well and what she was playing recently, but what impressed her the most was his silence. One year, she won a very rare scholarship, and she excitedly went to share it with Mo Yan, and the teacher replied to her: Keep calm, just steal the fun yourself. Someone asked her what you learned the most from your teacher, and she replied, talk less.
The silent Mo Yan has his own firmness. "In terms of attacking Mo Yan, two groups of people who were originally incompatible with water and fire turned out to be comrades-in-arms, which is a happy thing and a place that makes me proud. If they start complimenting me together, then I do have to reflect on whether something is wrong with me. ”
I wrote "Wine Country", and used the phrase "man eats man" to symbolically ridicule and criticize corruption. Later, someone said that I didn't dare to write this and that, I could only smile bitterly three times, what were you doing when I wrote anti-corruption?"Wine Country" is a long story written by Mo Yan in the late 80s**, because of the sharp subject matter, many publications and publishing houses did not dare to take over, and it was officially published in 1993. "By now, for the courage of my writing at that time, I should also affirm myself. He calmed down slightly.
Reality and imagination.
After the reform and opening up, when Mo Yan's generation of writers entered the literary world, literature jumped out of the monotonous box, and the dazzling contemporary literature of the world was also translated, however, Chinese literature did not leave the external forces and the external reality environment. Sometimes it's obedience to external forces, sometimes it's rebellion, and rebellion sometimes brings disaster, and sometimes it brings glory. The tide rises and falls, and it is difficult to **. Mo Yan was rebellious, but it was generally smooth.
In "Frog", he confronts the family planning policy and presents the mistakes and contradictions caused by the policy. This ** book brought him the Mao Dun Literature Award. In his latest screenplay, "Crocodile," he turned his pen to anti-corruption.
The most controversial is "Breast and Fat Buttocks". "Breast and Fat Buttocks" was written after the Spring Festival in 1995, when his mother had just passed away, and under the surging of his heart, he spread out the manuscript paper in the old adobe house of his hometown. In 83 days, he miraculously completed more than 900 manuscript papers, nearly 500,000 words. When he wrote it, he only used "Fat Breasts and Fat Buttocks" as the tentative title, but the moment he stopped writing, he knew that the title of the book was inevitable. And in China in the 90s, such a name with a physical suggestion was quite impactful, and criticism poured in.
What made Mo Yan most helpless was that some people equated the characters in the book with Mo Yan's family and started insulting them. "If it's ignorance, of course it's forgivable, but these people actually know the dialectical relationship between ** and reality, but they still scold like that and induce many people to follow them and scold. ”
Many years later, someone turned out "Breast and Fat Buttocks" and praised Mo Yan as a feminist writer, which he never thought of when he wrote **, and he had never heard of this term at that time. "When I was writing, I didn't realize that ** contained such a problem, but later when this issue was widely concerned, people paid attention to the analysis of ** by the way, which is the best state of writer's writing. Mo Yan said a little proudly.
He presented a cruel truth that everyone knows but is accustomed to: in the feudal era, women in China were a group of people who suffered and were oppressed.
He saw the cruel reality of China's bottom: in the face of life and survival, morality has no power. His ** is full of two heavy words: survival.
When he was in the fifth grade of primary school, the school was closed, and Mo Yan dropped out of school and worked as a farmer for nearly ten years. He spent long hours grazing alone, spending all day with cattle in the blue sky and white clouds. The days of loneliness and boredom force a hungry child to create imaginations and hallucinations in search of an outlet, and the stories of gods and ghosts come out for him to touch and project onto the plants and animals in front of him. Later, the imagination cultivated in barrenness became his best tool of labor, and a child in hallucination often appeared in **, with his own shadow. "Mo Yan's imagination," said the Nobel Prize for Literature, "flies over the entire state of human existence." ”
Wait for a moment.
In the years after winning the Nobel Prize, Mo Yan couldn't help himself, "I couldn't be busy accepting one out of every ten invitations". After almost five years, "my friends should have participated in the activities, and I said everything I should have said", he finally had time to return to Gaomi, take out the previous short drafts, delete and revis, clean up, and most of the articles in "Late Bloomers" were rescheduled for a short period of time in the summer of 2017.
Since the republication of his works five years after winning the award, Mo Yan's works have added short and medium stories**, dramas, and poetry ...... to the sequenceHe announced his intention to become a playwright, writing and publishing poetry extensively, but he was slow to move on the genre that brought him the highest reputation. Someone on the Internet ridiculed that your idol Marquez could write "Love in the Time of Cholera" after winning the award, what about you?Mo Yan didn't ask himself this question.
In fact, when he put pen to paper, he vented a long story that was full of exuberance, and his impulse often surged in his heart. Although he deliberately "defended" himself, he often poured cold water on his readers, saying that the quality of a work does not depend on its length, and that length is not the highest standard for judging a writer. But he also hopes that at least one better long story will be written.
If I write another long story, I can also say that I write it for the readers," Mo Yan smiled and changed his posture in the rattan chair, "but in the end, it's for myself." ”
For many years, Mo Yan has had the urge to create a long story on the theme of war. As early as when he and Yu Hua were roommates in the dormitory building of Lu Xun Academy of Literature, this idea was germinated. From the time he joined the army at the age of 21 to the time he retired, he served in the army for 22 years, and he always had a long-cherished wish to give an account of this period of life. What is certain is that it will not be another book of "The Quiet Don" or "War and Peace", and he will not write about this possible war in the form that people have seen**.
There are a lot of notebooks piled up on the desk at home, and when I think of something and dream about something, I pick up a little note. He never wrote a fixed number of words every day like he went to work, he was notoriously fast, and when he was younger, he was like a rampaging machine driven by memory and imagination, crushing through the night, and he could conjure up a short story in one night. Today's writing is still assault, writing "Crocodile", sometimes three to five thousand words a day, and not writing a word when I don't feel it.
He is much more cautious than before, and no longer pursues quantity, not because he has to write. His passion is still in the form. In the past few years, he has played a lot on his mobile phone, and he wondered if he could use the form of online follow-up to follow a long story**?It didn't take long for him to deny himself: "You can use the post to make a long story, and you can use the annotation to note a long story, but it's just a small skill of carving insects, not that you have to do it." Maybe in the end, it's better to write in an honest way. ”
Writers are facing a new era, but Mo Yan has no intention of changing. Mo Yan also asked the students to use AI to write an award speech for Yu Hua, and he took it to the meeting and read it, no one could see it, but he knew that "none of them are valuable." "He's still confident in his creativity, and if the AI imitates him, it's just forcing him to come up with new ideas that the robot can't keep up with.
One of his firm views was that writers should work for the development of their own languages. Whether it is the multi-voiced and multi-perspective polyphonic structure built with letters and **nested** in "Wine Country", or the narrative unfolded from the six perspectives of donkeys, cows, pigs, dogs, monkeys, and people in "Fatigue of Life and Death", or the synthesis of letters and dramas in "Frog", it is his exploration of form. Storytellers, don't use ordinary tones.
He's waiting for a trigger point. Mo Yan's best** is deeply buried in the spiritual soil, but it needs to be activated by an accidental factor. For example, the strong emotional fluctuations brought about by the death of his mother stimulated him to write his feelings about the fate of women in feudal society as "Breast Fat Buttocks";Seeing the murals of the six reincarnations in a temple made him familiar with the memory of an old peasant who insisted on working alone and fighting against the trend in the era of collective economy, and wrote "Fatigue of Life and Death" in the framework of the six reincarnations.
Now, such a moment is needed. Mo Yan said. (End) (Original title: Mo Yan: Written for Myself).