MCLC: Mo Yan acceptance speech (2,3,4)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Tommy McClellan <tmmcclellan at googlemail.com>
Subject: Mo Yan acceptances speech (2)
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Re "Mo Yan acceptance speech (1)", this is getting petty and unworthy. Mo
Yan gave a fine speech - humble, funny, humane.... Leave him alone now.
It's not his fault he lives in a country where the Chinese Writers'
Association is one of the last remaining vestiges of genuine socialism,
which all professional writers MUST (realistically) belong to. I happen to
think that Mo Yan deserves the Prize, and western hacks should accept that
non-'dissidents' (by their definition) can have something worthwhile to
say and contribute.

Specifically on the mother figure in the speech, she seems to me to be a
subtle metonym for the place of literature ('stories'/'storytelling') in
the real China. Mo Yan deftly and modestly uses these and other anecdotes
in the speech to answer the western response to his prize.

He does his best to avoid the type of politics that has been at the center
of the furore arising from his prize. Nor are my opinions on the politics
of China appropriate here.

Tommy McClellan

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From: a.e. clark <aec at raggedbanner.com>
Subject: Mo Yan acceptance speech (3)

Toward the end of his speech accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, Mo
Yan offered three "stories" (故事) as his response to the controversy that
greeted his selection for the Prize. Falling somewhere along the spectrum
between allegory and parable, they can be interpreted in the light of
recent events. Controversy focused on Mo Yan's acquiescence (as
vice-chairman of the official writers' association) in his government's
restraint of speech and its persecution of some writers; and especially on
his choice not to protest the imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo, who had been
awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace two years before and remains
incommunicado.

_First story_  The year would have been '63 or '64. The "exhibit of
suffering" (苦难展览) would have comprised dioramas showing landlords
squeezing rent from the poor, serfs being tortured, and similar scenes
said to characterize life in China under the old regime. Eight-year-olds
will not be emotionally moved by a static depiction of a world they have
never experienced. But to meet the expectations of their teacher, he and
his classmates feigned grief and horror. The only student who did not put
on an act was disciplined after Mo Yan and several other students informed
on him. The lesson which the author draws is: "When everyone around you is
crying, you deserve to be allowed not to cry, and when the tears are all
for show, your right not to cry is greater still."

Apologists for the Communist Party of China often dismiss foreigners'
concern for human rights as a cloak for "China-bashing." Those who appeal
on behalf of persecuted writers and lawyers, in this view, do not care
about those whose plight they publicize: they merely seek to embarrass
China.  I interpret this response of Mo Yan to his critics as a fairly
blunt statement that he doesn't care what happens to people like Liu
Xiaobo and Liu Xia and he doesn't believe anyone else cares either; he is
impatient with what he considers hypocrisy and affirms his right to hold
aloof from it. That the message is wrapped in a contrite anecdote about
the dark side of Maoism is, I think, an artful piece of misdirection.

_Second story_.  One evening when he was in the army, an elderly officer
glanced at the (empty) seat in front of Mo Yan and asked, "Where is
everyone?" Mo Yan took offense at the implication that he was no one.

It's hard not to see here a veiled allusion to Liu Xiaobo's empty
chair in Oslo and the tendency of many commenters to compare the two
prizewinners, seldom to Mo Yan's advantage.  If that is correct, then Mo
Yan is annoyed that the absent Liu Xiaobo has drawn attention which
properly belongs to the present Mo Yan.  Complicating this interpretation
is the regret which the author says he now feels for the vehemence of his
youthful reaction.  He could be acknowledging a pique while claiming to
rise above it; or -- more cynically -- he might judge that an expression
of remorse makes it socially acceptable to give vent to his annoyance.

_Third story_.   There is one scapegoat, who is saved, and seven (many)
scapegoaters, who perish. The temple in which the artisans have sought
shelter from the storm is "dilapidated" (破庙): that detail sets up the
denouement, but it also carries certain connotations for anyone who lived
through the assault on the Four Olds. The artisans are guilt-ridden,
superstitious, and prone to moralistic judgments.

I believe this story is directed at those fellow-writers (like him,
bricklayers of the word) who have challenged the morality of Mo Yan's
support for the regime. The entire moral edifice on which they rely, and
from which they claim to cast him out, is in his view flawed and doomed.
History will continue to unfold, sometimes full of storms and suffering:
personal morality has not caused history and will not change it.  If other
writers wish to ostracize him, that may be exactly what he needs, and it
won't do them any good. He considers himself fortunate to be a pragmatist.

A. E. Clark

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From: Han Meng
Subject: Mo Yan's acceptance speech (4)

In response to Costa's query about footbinding, this might be useful:

http://www.csuchico.edu/~cheinz/syllabi/fall99/linzey/where.html

“In northern China where the agriculture is mainly wheat production
footbinding appears to be very popular, common, and almost “universal”
even among the rich and poor.” (Turner 1997:449)  In southern China,
however, footbinding was not very popular if at all.  Only “women of
higher families” (Turner 1997:449) practiced footbinding in the south.
This is probably mainly from the southern agricultural production of rice
in which the fields are almost always wet.  Here women and men had to work
barefooted.  This made it impossible for women with bound feet and because
the “need for family labor, including that of women, it made it impossible
to exclude them from doing work in wet fields barefooted working against
the binding of feet to smaller sizes.” (Turner 1997:450)  Footbinding in
the rice fields wasn’t very practical.  “Girls and women with bound feet
did not work in wet rice paddies, but that they did plant, manage, and
harvest dry crops like beans, vegetables, and wheat, being grown in the
same area and sometime by the same families.” (Turner 1997:451)