Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh

it must have been delicious, so we rushed over, grabbed pieces of our own, and started crunching away. The more I ate, the better the stuff tasted, until it seemed absolutely delicious. Then some of the village adults who were looking on came up to see what we were eating with such gusto, and joined in. When the principal came out to put a stop to this feast, that only led to pushing and shoving. Just what that coal felt like down in my belly is something I can no longer recall, but I'll never forget how it tasted. Don't for a minute think there was no pleasure in our lives back then. We had fun doing lots of things. Topping the list of fun things to do was gleefully eating something we'd never considered food before.
    The famine lasted for a couple of years or more, until the mid-1960s, when life improved. We still didn't have enough to eat, but every person was allotted about 200 pounds of grain per year; that combined with the wild greens we foraged in the fields was enough to get by on, and fewer people starved to death.
    Obviously, the experience of going hungry cannot, by itself, make a writer out of someone, but once I became a writer, I had a deeper understanding of life than most because of it. Prolonged hunger made me realize how very important food is to people. Glory, causes, careers, and love mean nothing on an empty stomach. Because of food, I lost my self-respect; because of food, I suffered the humiliation of a lowly cur; and because of food I took up creative writing, with a vengeance.
    After becoming a writer, I began to think back to the loneliness of my childhood, much the same as I thought back to my experience of going hungry every time I sat at a table piled high with good food. The place where I was born, Northeast Gaomi Township, is situated at a spot where three counties converge. It's a vast, sparsely populated area that lacks adequate transportation. As far as the eye can see, my village is surrounded by weed-covered, low-lying land topped by wild-flowers. I had been taken out of school at a very young age, so while other kids were sitting in classrooms, I was taking cattle out into the field to graze. Eventually, I got to know more about cattle than I did about people. I knew what made them happy, angry, sad, and content; I knew what their expressions meant; and I knew what they were thinking. On that vast stretch of uncultivated land it was just me and a few head of cattle. They grazed calmly, their eyes appearing as blue as the ocean. When I tried to talk to them, they ignored me, caring only about the tasty grass on the ground. So I'd lie on my back and watch puffy clouds drift slowly across the sky, pretending they were a bunch of big, lazy men. But when I tried to talk to them, they ignored me too. There were lots of birds up in the sky — meadowlarks, common larks, and other familiar types I couldn't name. Their calls moved me deeply, often to the point of tears. I tried talking to them too, but they were much too busy to pay any attention to me. So I lay there in the grass feeling sad, and began to let my imagination run wild. In my dreamy state of mind, all sorts of wonderful thoughts poured into my head, helping me gain an understanding of love and decency.
    Pretty soon I learned how to talk to myself. I developed uncommon gifts of expression, able to talk on and on not only with eloquence but even in rhyme. My mother once overheard me talking to a tree. Alarmed, she said to my father, “Father of our son, do you think there's something wrong with him?” Later, when I was old enough, I entered adult society as a member of a labor brigade, and the habit of talking to myself that had begun when I was tending cattle caused nothing but trouble in my family. “Son,” my mother pleaded with me, “don't you ever stop talking?” Moved to tears by the look on her face, I promised I'd stop. But the minute there were people around, out came all the words I'd stored up inside, like rats fleeing a nest. That would be followed by powerful feelings of remorse and an overwhelming sense that I had once again failed to take my mother's instructions to heart. That's why I chose Mo Yan — Don't Speak — as a pen name. But as my exasperated mother so often said, “A dog can't keep from eating excrement, and a wolf can't stop from eating meat.” I simply couldn't stop talking. It's a habit that has caused me to offend many of my fellow writers, because what invariably comes out of my mouth