【Famous Authors and Their Masterpieces】Mo Yan: A Fierce Eating Manner
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At the time when my brain needed nutrients the most, it was also the time when most Chinese people were starving. I often tell my friends that if it weren’t for hunger, I would definitely be smarter than I am now, though not necessarily. Because they were never full from birth, my earliest memories are all related to food. At that time, there were over a dozen people in my family, and every time it was time to eat, I would burst into tears. My uncle’s daughter was four months older than me; we were both about four or five years old at the time. At each meal, my grandmother would give me and my sister a piece of moldy sweet potato dried food each, but I always thought that my grandmother was biased, giving the larger piece to my sister. So he snatched the piece from his sister’s hand and threw his own piece over. After taking it, they realized their own piece was larger, so they took it back again. Like this, with three or two grabs, the sister started crying. Auntie’s face also stretched out. Of course, I started crying non-stop as soon as I sat down at the dinner table. The mother sighed helplessly. Of course, grandma took the side of my sister and criticized me. The aunt’s words were even more offensive. My mother kept apologizing to my aunt and grandmother, complaining about my big belly, saying it was absolutely wrong to have a son with such a large belly. After eating those sweet potato chips, there were only wild vegetable dumplings left. Those black, mouth-piercing things – impossible to eat, but yet one has to eat them. So she ate while crying, swallowing it down with her tears. On what kind of nutrients do we, this generation, rely to grow up? I don’t know. At that time, I thought that I would be satisfied as long as I could have a full meal of sweet potato chips.
The spring of 1960 was probably a dark spring in human history as well. All the edible things have been eaten up: grass roots, tree bark, and the grass on the roof eaves. People die in the village almost every day. They all died of hunger. At first, when someone died, they would be buried, and their relatives would go to the temple at the edge of the village, crying and reporting the death to the deity, in order to have the deceased’s name removed from the records of that deity. But later on, no one anymore buried the dead, nor did anyone go to the temple to report their deaths. Yet some people still forced themselves to drag the dead bodies out of the village; many mad dogs, their eyes red from eating corpses, were waiting there. As soon as the dead bodies were laid down, the dogs rushed at them and devoured the victims. In the past, I didn’t quite understand why poor people in plays were said to use fur coffins; now I know what a fur coffin is. Later, some people wrote about cannibalism at that time, and I think it could only have been a very localized phenomenon. It is said that Ma Si from our village once cut meat from the legs of his deceased wife and cooked it to eat, but there is no confirmation of this, as he died soon after as well. Food, oh food, where has all the food gone? Who ate all the food? The people in the village are honest but incompetent; they dare not go out and seek a better life even if it means starving to death, and they just stay at home struggling on. Later, I heard that the white soil in Nanwa could be eaten, so I went to dig it up and ate it. After eating it, they couldn’t defecate; some people even died from suffocation, so they stopped eating soil.
By that time I was already in school. In winter, a truckload of coal was brought to the school; it was shiny and of good quality. A classmate who had tuberculosis told us that the coal smelled wonderful, and the smell became stronger the more you chewed it. So we all went to get some to eat, and indeed, the more we chewed it, the more delicious it became. As soon as class started, the teacher wrote on the blackboard while we ate coal below, producing a cracking sound. The teacher asked us what we eat, and everyone said coal. The teacher asked how one could eat coal? We opened our dark mouths and said, \"Teacher, coal is delicious; it’s the best thing in the world. It smells wonderful. Teacher, have a piece and give it a try.\" The teacher is a woman named Yu; she’s also very hungry, with a sallow complexion. It seems even a beard has grown on her – she’s so hungry that she looks like a man. She said skeptically, How can coal be eaten? How can coal be eaten? A boy politely handed a shiny piece of coal to the teacher, saying, \"Try it, sir; if it doesn’t taste good, you can spit it out.\" Teacher Yu took a small bite tentatively, chewed with a crunching sound, frowned as if tasting it, and then began to eat it in large bites. She said in delight, “Ah, it’s really delicious!” ” It’s a bit magical; I still don’t think it’s real right now, but there’s no doubt it is real. Last year, when I went to visit my family, I met Uncle Wang, who used to be the doorman at school. We talked about eating coal, and Uncle Wang said it was absolutely true – how could it be a lie? Your feces, when smashed together, become coal cakes that burn with a whooshing sound in the stove. When they were extremely hungry, **relief food was sent – bean cakes, half a pound per person. Grandma gave me a piece the size of an apricot kernel; I put it in my mouth and chewed it – it was incredibly sweet. I didn’t want to swallow it, fearing it would disappear, as if it were melting in my mouth. The grandfather of the Sun family, who lived next to us on the west side, ate up the two jin of bean cakes assigned to his family on his way home. Once he got home, he felt thirsty and drank cold water; the bean cakes expanded in his stomach, causing it to burst and leading to his death.
More than a decade later, after reflecting on those times, my mother said that people back then had stomachs as thin as paper, with no fat at all. In adults, edema occurs; generally, children have huge bellies that look like water containers, with their stomachs being transparent and the blue intestines moving around inside. They have an extraordinary appetite; children aged five or six can drink eight bowls of wild vegetable porridge at a time, and those are large bowls made of coarse porcelain, similar to the ones used by the revolutionary martyr Ms. Zhao Yiman. ? Later on, life gradually improved, and it was basically possible to have enough food for half a year thanks to wild vegetables. My uncle, who worked at the supply and marketing cooperative, bought a bag of cottonseed cakes through back channels and put them in a jar. When I got up at night to pee, I couldn’t resist taking a piece and putting it in my bed; I would cover my head and eat it – it was extremely delicious.
Life is getting better and better; now we can finally eat enough sweet potato chips. By this time, it was already the later stage of the Cultural Revolution. One year, during the year-end settlement, my family received over 290 yuan, which was an astonishing amount at that time. I remember Sixth Aunt breaking her daughter’s head because she lost a dime while going to the market. With so much money allocated, the village’s butchery shop sold meat at low prices; my father decided to buy five jin of it, maybe a little more, to reward us. The meat was cut into large pieces and cooked; there was a bowl of it for each person. I ate an entire big bowl of the fatty meat in one go, and still felt it wasn’t enough. My mother sighed and gave me the contents of her bowl. I’ve finished eating; my mouth is still craving more, but my stomach can take no more. Streams of greasy oil, along with unchewed pieces of meat, rose up; it felt as though my throat was being cut by a small knife – that’s what eating meat is like. My greed for food is well-known in the village; whenever there’s anything delicious at home, no matter where it’s hidden, I always find a way to steal some of it. Sometimes, while eating, I can’t control myself; I just decide to go for it, ignoring the consequences, and eat everything, ready to take any scolding or punishment. My grandparents live at my aunt’s house, and they asked me to take food to them. I always took the opportunity when food was delivered to lift the bento box and steal some to eat, which caused my mother a lot of trouble. I still feel guilty about this to this day. Why am I so craving it? It’s probably not entirely due to hunger; it has something to do with my character. A child with a sweet tooth is often someone with weak willpower and poor self-control, and that’s me.
In the mid-1970s, when I went to work on water conservancy projects, the production team would use wheat from those projects to make large steamed buns; each bun weighed half a jin, and I could eat four of them at a time, while some people could eat six. In 1976, I joined the army and said goodbye to hunger from then on. When I was transferred from the recruit training unit to my new unit, for my first meal, a basket of snow-white small steamed buns was served, and I ate eight of them in one go. I feel there’s still space in my stomach, but I’m too embarrassed to eat. The head cook said to the quartermaster, “Damn it, here comes a guy with a big belly.” ”The quartermaster said, “It doesn’t matter; after eating for a month, one won’t be able to eat anymore.” ”Sure enough, a month later, it was still those same steamed buns; I could only eat two at a time. And now, one is enough.
Although I’m not hungry these days and my stomach is full, whenever there’s a feast, I can’t help but rush to get as much food as I can, as if afraid of not getting enough, without caring what others think of me. I regretted it after eating as well. Why can’t I eat at a slow pace? Why can’t I eat a little less? It also gives the impression that I come from a noble background and have elegant manners, because in a civilized society, eating too much is considered a sign of lack of good manners. Many people criticized my large appetite; I would eat with great enthusiasm, devoting myself entirely to eating. This hurt my self-esteem greatly, so I resolved to be more polite when eating next time. But the next time, those people of status still criticized me for eating too much and too fast, acting like wolves. My self-esteem was further hurt. Once again, while eating, I kept in mind to eat less, to eat slowly, not to take food from others’ plates, to avoid making noises with my mouth while eating, to avoid having a hostile look, and to hold the chopsticks at the top. When picking up food, I would take only one stem of vegetable or one bean sprout, like a little bird or a butterfly. Yet people still criticized me for eating too much and too fast, which really made me angry. While I was trying to eat in a polite manner, I noticed that those ladies who attacked me ate like hippos, only starting to behave politely once they had had their fill. So anger burned within me; the next time I had one of those free meals, with a plate of sea cucumbers served, I picked up the plate and transferred half of them to my own bowl, then devoured them eagerly. They said I ate in a rough manner, and in a fit of anger, I transferred that other half to my bowl as well and ate it greedily, as a challenge. This time, they smiled kindly and said, Mo Yan is really adorable. Reflecting on my eating habits over the past thirty-odd years, I feel no different from a pig or a dog – constantly grunting and wandering around in search of something to eat to fill this bottomless hole. I wasted too much of my intelligence on eating; now that the problem of eating is solved, my mind is gradually losing its sharpness.
At that time, those were the only conditions; there was nothing else to do. I haven’t experienced it myself.
Fish Boss: Thank you, for giving these young folks a great lesson.