Revolting tales of revolting villages
Katherine Gerson
THE GARLIC BALLADS by Mo Yan Hamish Hamilton, £15.99, pp. 290 Te one thing that really puts the wind up in Peking is the possibility that the peasants may be revolting. The Commu- nists came to power on the back of a peasant revolt. They know the country will become ungovernable if the countryside grows restive. That is why the author. of Red Sorghum, which brought international prestige to China when converted into a prize-wining film, finds himself banned from travelling abroad after writing The Garlic Ballads: because this book describes contemporary Chinese peasant life as very revolting indeed.
Mo Yan's set is sort of mediaeval Wild West somewhere in North China. In Paradise County the weddings are of the shotgun variety, the sheriff is a bad guy, and nothing much has changed since the Ming dynasty — except that the rice wine is spiced with DDT to make it taste more expensive. The locals have been told to turn their fields over to garlic, on the understanding that the crop will be held in the cold store and sold at a good price the following year. In the event, there is a glut; the peasants are kept from the store; and a frustrated mob burns down the County headquarters.
The book starts near to the end of this story and thereafter works back and forth towards it and beyond. A doomed romance is spliced into the plot, and we are shown glimpses of the lives of three generations of local peasants. They have suffered depriva- tion in the Republican period, oppression in the Cultural Revolution, and are now exploited by poverty and bullying feudal bosses. It is easy to see why they should feel driven to an act of profitless violence.
The trouble is, the novel stinks. To some extent it is only fair that it should. Mo Yan has a habit of using some symbolic veg- etable emblem in writing about peasant tribulations, and here he has chosen the smelliest of them all. The rank aroma of garlic gets into the blood, sweat and urine of Mo Yan's peasants. The fetid stench of the rotting herb hangs over Paradise Coun- ty throughout the story. We saw the title, so we cannot complain. But the author shows a determination to describe the dis-
The little rooster stuck like glue, pecking at [Gao's wounded ankle] every couple of steps, while the policemen, ignoring his screams of pain, kept propelling him forward. Then, as they negotiated the downslope of a hill, the rooster actually plucked a white tendon out of the open sore on Gao Yang's ankle. Dig- ging with its claws, its tail feathers touching the ground, its neck feathers fanned out, and its comb bright red, it tugged on the tendon with all its might, pulling it a foot or more until it snapped in two. Gao Yang, reeling, turned to see the little rooster swallowing it like one big noodle.
Some chicken. Some noodle.
Paradise County is populated by deformed as well as down-trodden peasants, and violence is habitual amongst them. Gao Yang, for instance, has a blind daughter, a son with six toes, and a wife with, a stunted arm. Fathers string up dis- obedient daughters. Old ladies are knocked insensible by young policewomen. A blind minstrel is electrocuted by a policeman wielding a cattle prod. The poor reader feels bruised at first, and then numb. The constant repetition of horrible events dulls the sensibilities, and robs the author of his intended effect. He is not helped, it has to be said, by his translator. Howard Gold- gusting which seems a little perverse. The characters wet themselves, drink their urine under duress, eat vomit, cough phlegm and spew blood. Eventually, I become vaguely aware that something nasty had been left out. Then I happened on the following: 'The skin above his ankle ruptured, releasing a pool of pus that ran into his shoe'. So we can tick pus, too.
That particular passage goes on to challenge any remaining squeamishness.
and has just hurt his foot. A chicken comes out from some bushes and attacks him: blatt may be a respected collaborator of the author, and I dare say his Chinese is impressive. His English, however, is leaden and lustreless.
That is a pity, because we often catch gleams of the real thing underneath the goldblatting. Mo Yan has the novelist's eye for inconsequential detail which can bring the description of inherently incredible events to life. For instance, a peasant girl is about to commit suicide:
She found some rope in the corner, tossed it over a beam, and made a noose in the other end. Then she fetched a stool and stood on it. The coarse fibers of the rope pricked her fingers. Maybe she should rub some oil on it. She was beginning to waver.
Mo Yan also shows a gift for lyrical description of a beautiful but indifferent landscape. Although his dialogue is artifi- cial, and his major characters are not fully rounded, there is a range of colours in his palette, and he peoples Paradise County with some vivid human beings.
The best thing about the book is that it is true. Life in the peasant villages of most parts of China is abject. Local officials act as petty tyrants; the peasants are prey. The chronicle of Paradise County may some- times read like a repetitive melodrama, but the events described happen every day. In the first six months of 1993 the Chinese press reported nearly 200 major `disturbances' in the countryside, many of them more significant than the incident in Paradise County. And as Party Politburo member Tian Jiyun stated at the time, 'if there are problems in the villages, no one can hold on to power.' There are problems in the villages, and anyone writing about them should expect hostile attention from the Chinese authorities — and a hearing from a British audience.
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