Mo Yan, winner of the Nobel prize for literature, has taken on the critics who have dismissed him for being too close to the Chinese government, saying they envy him the award and are distorting the meaning of his work.
In a rare interview – his first major public conversation since winning the Nobel last autumn – the author whose pen name means "don't speak" spoke out on a number of issues in what translator Eric Abrahamsen said was "probably as close as Mo Yan will ever come to an admission of his full political position in China".
Mo has been lambasted by Chinese dissidents including the artist Ai Weiwei for, in Ai's words, "clearly pursuing the party's line and in several cases [showing] no respect for the independence of intellectuals". His refusal to sign a petition calling for the release of the imprisoned Nobel peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo led to him being dismissed by Salman Rushdie as a "patsy of the regime", while his fellow Nobel laureate Herta Müller called his win "a slap in the face for all those working for democracy and human rights".
But in an interview with the German paper Der Spiegel, Mo took on Ai's criticism that he is too close to the state and does not represent China, asking "which intellectual can claim to represent China? I certainly do not claim that. Can Ai Weiwei? Those who can really represent China are digging dirt and paving roads with their bare hands."
He also hit back at his fellow Chinese author Liao Yiwu, who last year called him a "state writer" who failed to keep his distance from the government. "I know he envies me for this award and I understand this. But his criticism is unjustified," Mo told Der Spiegel, adding that since he won the Nobel, his critics "use magnifying glasses to look for my flaws and they even distort the meaning of my poems". One particular poem attacked by Liao, he said, is not praising a disgraced party official, but is actually satire.
And Mo pointed out that while he "openly expressed the hope" that Liu be freed, "again, I was immediately criticised and forced to speak out again and again on the same issue … I am reminded of the rituals of repetition in the Cultural Revolution. If I decide to speak, then nobody will stop me. If I decide not to speak, then not even a knife at my neck will make me speak."
"He's basically saying screw all you guys, everyone is trying to get me to say something and I stay silent, and put what I want to say in my books," said Abrahamsen, who has interpreted for Mo in the past and who founded the literary translation organisation Paper Republic. "He's basically digging in his heels."
While Mo said he admired writers such as Günter Grass for speaking out against their governments, he himself is not keen to join them. "I don't like to give political statements. I am a fast writer. But I think thoroughly. When I speak publicly, I immediately ask myself if I have made myself clear. My political views are quite clear though. One only has to read my books," he said.
The author did say that as a member of the Communist Party of China – which he joined in 1979 while he was in the army – he has realised "that the Cultural Revolution was the mistake of individual leaders. It had less to do with the party itself."
"There is no contradiction with my political opinion when I harshly criticise party officials in my books. I have emphasised repeatedly that I am writing on behalf of the people, not the party. I detest corrupt officials," he told Der Spiegel.
Abrahamsen described this as a "very daring" thing to say. "There is no question what he thinks and where his loyalties lie and where his moral standards are. He says I stand with the people, not the party … In Chinese political discussions there is not a distinction between the two. Anything you say which makes it sound like there is a disconnect between the two is actually pretty politically unacceptable," he said. "Mo Yan won't come out and say 'no, I am not free, yes, I am being censored'. [This interview] is as close as he can come to saying that. It's as direct as I've ever seen him, and if you are Chinese and used to reading between the lines, he is explaining exactly what he thinks … I was impressed."
Particular issue has been taken over the fact that the author was one of 100 Chinese literary figures to copy by hand a 1942 speech by Mao Zedong. But Mo told Der Spiegel that he only joined in with the project because he was "vain enough to take the opportunity to show off with my calligraphy".
"That speech is an historic document by now which has its rationality but also its limits. When I and my generation of writers started out, we extended these limits step by step and crossed them. Whoever has actually read my work from that period and has a conscience cannot claim that I was uncritical," said the author. "Honestly, it was a commercial project. The editor of a publishing house, an old friend of mine, came up with the idea. He had convinced around 100 writers before and when we attended a conference together, he walked around with a book and a pen and asked me, too, to hand-copy a paragraph of Mao's speech. I asked 'What should I write?' He said: 'I chose this paragraph for you.'"
And no one, he said, complained about his "honorary title" as deputy president of the China's Writers' Association until he won the Nobel. "There are people who think the Nobel should only go to people who oppose the government. Is that so? Should the Nobel prize in literature not be for literature, for something someone wrote?" he asked.
"I have a certain sympathy with writers who don't want to speak," said Isabel Hilton, editor of chinadialogue.net. "There are writers who are political animals, such as Mario Vargas Llosa. They don't always do politics well. But we seem to expect from our writers, particularly in situations like his, to be proxies in political situations of frustration, so it's particularly difficult for someone like Mo Yan. You have his own political situation, and his character – his reluctance to be a public figure … The problem is the Nobel is a proxy battlefield for all kinds of issues in China."
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