Frog By Mo Yan

MO Yan's Frog is a first-person novel written in the epistolary form-- with letters (and a nine-act play)—narrated by a Chinese farmer turned soldier who witnessed the worst of the excesses of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and lived to see the changes brought about by the free-market policies of the 1970s: free enterprise, phenomenal urban growth and mass migration from rural areas. Mo Yan (whose real name is Guan Moye) received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012 and, according to his award citation, is a writer "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary".  He won praise for his epic novel "Red Sorghum" where he highlighted the oppression carried out by the Japanese Army during their occupation of China in the 1930s and 1940s, and the war of resistance fought by the Red Army guerillas.  "Frog", on the other hand, offers a birds-eye view of Chinese people and their everyday struggles, as well as a peek into the domestic life of the billion. Mo Yan himself grew up in on a farm near Gaomi township where the story is anchored and witnessed the excesses of the fifties and sixties. The pages are full of references to modern Chinese political history and its cultural and social practices. 

The novel, published in 2009 and translated in English in 2014, is a story of Gugu and her campaign on behalf of the Party to maintain birth control. Gugu, the narrator's aunt, was born in 1937 and became an obstetrician at the age of seventeen following some courses she took on birthing methods after China's Independence or the Red Army's victory over the KMT. Gugu's life and work, her dedication to the party and the various campaigns, particularly to limit family size and bring cohesion to the state's effort to modernize the country is described; and finally her coming to terms with the impact her relentless pursuit of the families who "broke the rule" on the many lives it ruined.  

Mo Yan is candid, in spite of his Communist Party sympathies, in portraying the darker sides of the tactics used by the regime to keep the country moving forward following Mao's victory.  The main theme running through this book is the devastation caused by the one-child policy and the strong-arm tactics used at the local level to ensure that ordinary villagers comply with the policy laid down by the party. One of the heart-breaking episodes of forced abortion involves the narrator, known as Tadpole, whose first wife dies after being coerced into undergoing the procedure. 

With the benefit of hindsight, the author voices his reservations openly about the social costs of the policies carried out by the regime, and seems to be a repentant communist who sees how the excesses of the '60s and '70s destroyed many families, and also casts a critical eye on those who took advantage of the liberalization to set up enterprises and become rich. He also points to the influence peddling of the Party Apparatchik and is at times very critical of the party. The father-in-law of Tadpole's first wife, Renmei, was an educated man and had a good job as the head of a commune animal-husbandry station who lost his job and as sent back to his village because he was outspoken. 

My Yan is a gifted writer and as an example let me quote from a love letter written by Wang Gan (a friend of Tadpole) to Little Lion. "... this heart of mine belongs to you only, and if you wished to eat it, I would unhesitatingly dig it out for you". He weaves through more than thirty years of events which saw major changes in the countryside, government policies, and social norms and practices. Some of the most eloquent chapters paint heart-wrenching events that take place during the Party's Hundred Flowers and Great Leap Forward Campaign's and are clear attempts to shame the previous regime. 

A brief account of the background for this novel is in order. The Hundred Flowers Campaign was launched in 1957 under the slogan: "Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land." However, within a few weeks, the regime withdrew the Campaign and unleashed a reign of terror. Soon thereafter, the Great Leap Forward campaign began in 1958. It has been estimated that of there were deaths in excess of 20 million during this movement.  Another by-product of these policies was the Famine of 1960 when many survived by eating coal.   Mo Yan's account of the practice of eating coal is very elegant and moving. He recalls an incident when Tadpole, as a young boy, found out from another fellow student that there was plenty of coal lying around and unguarded, and that once you get into the habit, it did not taste so bad after all and quenched the hunger. 

But his most beautiful prose is evident as he describes the excesses of the birth-control policy. His own wife is a victim and so are many other families. Gugu and Tadpole's second wife, Little lion, are part of this campaign, and he seems to describe with words that are befitting a wedding or romantic episode. His comparison of traditional China and modern China are strewn across the novel too. I offer short passages in the following on naming conventions and ancient rituals. 

Tadpole offers insights into naming practices in China in a letter. "Sensei, an old custom in my hometown dictated that a newborn child is given the name of a body part or organ.  ... I haven't looked into the origin of this custom, but I imagine it embodied the outlook of 'those who are badly named live long'. Either that or it evolved from a mother's thoughts that a child represented a piece of her body" .

We also get a very detailed description of rituals. This is how Tadpole recounts the 'circle the grave' ceremony for his mother: "There were burnt paper replicas of horses and people, as well as a paper TV set. ...I was told to circle Mather's grave with raw rice in my left hand and unhusked millet in my right. Three counterclockwise revolutions were followed by three clockwise during which I let the rice and millet drop slowly. 

Among the many fascinating episodes he recounts is how Tadpole finally is able to give "birth" to a boy. His wife is aware that she is infertile and has reached post-menopausal stage. However, she takes his egg and finds a surrogate mother for a fee.  The author provides a fascinating account of the monetary exchange between the surrogate mother and Tadpole's family. For example, the going rate was a 20% down payment on 30 thousand yuan for a girl and 50 thousand yuan for a boy;  and, 20 thousand for a still-born. Chen Mei, whose mother died giving birth to her while being forced to have an abortion was a surrogate mother for Little Lion, Tadpole's second wife. She herself and her sister sustained burns from a fire at a clothing factory and was working in the Bull Frog Farm which apparently was a front for illegal surrogate mother industry. It takes quite a little bit of mental gymnastics to understand how much of this was magical realism and how much was a criticism of the rush to modernization. One can easily see that Gaomi Township has some similarities to Macondo, where which he mentions in the play. "Yan has a half-streak of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in him, offering a world that is, by turns, magical without the realism or grimly real and stripped of all magic," says Jason Sheehan, a well known critic.

Among the weaknesses of the "history of modern China" that Mo Yan provides, while some of the gross excesses of the Party are highlighted, many are swept under the carpet, e.g., commune and forced labor, mass eviction, agricultural and industrial policy. Also, some of the references are hard to follow. He begins an event with the line, without any reference to the significance of the timing: "It was the sixth day of the sixth lunar month".

Finally, a word or two on the title of the book. Frog is a metaphor for Gugu's nemesis. She was frightened by frogs. But the last episode of the book takes place in a bullfrog farm, and the enterprise and its many secrets offer a critical snapshot of modern China. Tadpole's son was born at Bull Frog farm. But, we also learn that Mo Yan uses frog as a reference to the aborted fetuses that are metaphorically likened to it. The final nine act play is somewhat like a summary for the many twist and turns in the life of the surviving protagonists.  Last, but not the least the translation by Howard Rosenblatt has received widespread acclaim.  

Dr. Abdullah Shibli is a frequent contributor to these pages.