Mo Yan: The hardest time is when going uphill

In October 2019, the Nobel Prize for Literature was settled and won for Chinese writer Mo Yan.

Mo Yan was born in a very desolate village in Shandong, with a large population. In the 1950s and 1960s, material life was very poor, and rural children like him grew up like puppies and kittens. Mo Yan once went to other people's home to discuss dumplings in the New Year's Eve of a certain year. Economic poverty and political discrimination left a tragic memory for his teenage life. His father's too strict constraints also made him repressed. This psychological characteristic directly affected his later novel creation. In the third year of the National Primary School, Mo Yan read the works such as "Lin Hai Xue Yuan", "The Song of Youth" and "How Steel is Made", and was enlightened by literature. When Guo Xiao did not graduate and ran into the "Cultural Revolution", he dropped out of school to work, to graze cattle and cut grass for business. In his spare time, he read "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Water Margin". Even when the book is readable, he even read the "Xinhua Dictionary."

Mo Yan did not think of being a writer, but one year, Mo Yan saw that an article by Wang Meng was published in the newspaper. The purpose was to persuade the literary youth. Don’t squeeze in the narrow path of literature, judge whether you are early or not. This material, you can be a worker or an engineer, you can play your own specialties in other fields. Mo Yan was very stimulated after reading it. He thought that one's literary talent can't be judged by himself. How do you know that I can't do it? You all become famous, and all become writers. Why are you hitting us? How is it that a person is wise? The choice can only be through experimentation, through temptation, I wrote for a few years, no, I will automatically turn, I will not turn, I will starve to death, I have to do something else. For Mo Yan, who believes that action is more important than experience, this persuasion is meaningless. He can only tell himself that he must try it. Of course, it is better.

Only Mo Yan, a national diploma, tried not only to try it, but also tried several times. When he was 18 years old, Mo Yan, who went to the county cotton factory to work as a temporary worker, participated in the People's Liberation Army. This became a major turning point in his life. Then I spent a few years in the army and slowly began to learn to write. At the beginning, I still sneaked on writing, because if I was writing in the army, the leader would think that this was not a business. Until the publication of the novella "Red Sorghum", the response was strong, and was selected by the readers as the "My Favorite Works" in the year of "People's Literature". Mo Yan really took the road of professional creation.

Since then, Mo Yan’s creation has never been acceptable. He has successively published masterpieces such as "Liquor Country" and "Sandalwood Penalty". Although his hometown is old and his relatives are poor, Mo Yan has never felt inferior to him. Even he himself will not think of his creative source of "Xinhua Dictionary". It was all from the poor hometown of the year. After the success, Mo Yan did not forget his hometown, but thought that the wonderful language came from the people, so he often "mixed" with the people in the village as a child, and learned to use folks with the villagers. Language to describe things and express one's own thoughts.

Mo Yan once did a report that talked about "Hunger and loneliness are the source of my creation": Hunger and loneliness are linked to my hometown, that is, during my teenage years, I really experienced not eating enough to wear warm clothes. The tragic life, once had a period of about two or three days holding a cow or sheep to survive alone in the desolate land that can not see people. I once said that hunger and loneliness are the source of my creation, the driving force behind my creation, and my starting point. In the later road of creation, the rural poverty experience and the feeling of loneliness made him a distinctive Chinese native literature.

Losers are often people who are only five minutes hot; successful people are often the last person. Mo Yan persisted and did not give up in the most difficult time. He believed that the most difficult time was when he went uphill. There is a saying like this: Don't always think that life will always be destitute, because if you feel like this, then these will become facts and follow you. Instead, you should be hopeful and confident about the future, and maybe you will find it really as you expect. Although the original Mo Yan did not think of being a writer, the days that writing brought him must be the one he expected.