Jia Pingwa As I See Him

Mo Yan Tran. Jessica Yeung

Bilingual Classics

Jia Pingwa As I See Him

Mo Yan Tran. Jessica Yeung

Pingwa and I are of similar age. We also share similar background. We both grew up in the village; we both experienced the same process of change in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s and in the Reform era that followed. We have seen the same turbulence and turmoil in our society and the same distrust and animosity between human beings. From each of our perspectives and via the same major social transformations that we have experienced, we have observed how different value positions either conflict and disturb, or develop and progress, often plumbing the depths of obscurity, but sometimes casting piercing rays through time and space. No one will contest the view that the writing of our contemporaries is closely related to our times. One can also say that, without history as we have lived it, we would not have emerged as the writers that we are, or produced the works that we have.

Despite all that we share, we differ from one another in many ways, one being the deep psychological impact that Pingwa’s native soil has had on him. He comes from a place where the south meets the north. It has nurtured in him both the fi nesse of the south and the vigour of the north. The complexity resulting from the intricate union of northwestern culture and central-southern culture has made its mark on him, and is manifested in his profound creativity. This is miles apart from my inheritance from my hometown in Gaomi of Shandong Province in the northeast. He grew up listening to the sound of the sad but gutsy Qin opera, drinking the sweet water that flows through the Qin Mountains; I grew up listening to the sorrowful Mao opera often sung by the oppressed. He was raised on rice and wheat; I, on sweet potatoes and corn. Indeed, if one were to explore such details of a material nature, one might even unlock the mystery of creativity.

Pingwa made his name nationwide as early as the 1980s. He was among the fi rst writers who found success in the Reform era. If we recall the names of the writers who emerged around the same time, we notice that many of them now rarely come up with new works. Even if they do, hardly any are capable of breaking fresh ground. Only a handful have kept the beacon burning, and persisted to produce new works. Of these, irrefutably Pingwa shines brightest.Amidst all the renown he preserves his lowkey approach consistent with his modest and generous temperament. This is something I have authoritative knowledge of.

On one of my visits to Japan a few years ago I came across an essay by Jia Pingwa collected in a text-book aimed at teaching writing to Japanese readers. It was a piece about names. He says in the essay that in the summer of 1986 he received a telegram from Xinjiang sent by a man called Mo Yan. It requested him to pick the latter up at a certain time from the train station. What happened was that, although he and I did not know each other at the time, I was stuck in the nearby city of Lanzhou with my companions. We needed to stop in Xi’an but we did not know anybody there. So I suggested writing to Jia Pingwa, and we sent the telegram to him at the Writers’ Association of Xi’an.

Our train was delayed for four hours. By the time we stepped into the square outside the station, everybody had left. We shouted his name “Jia Pingwa” as we took a look around, but nobody answered. My companions chided me for my presumption. The fact was that we did not know the man, and had never met or communicated with each other before. What grounds did I have for assuming such solicitousness on his part that he would come all the way to meet us simply on account of my telegram request? At the time I felt my companions were right. However, only when I read Pingwa relating that incident in his essay years later did I realize that he did in fact come to meet me on his bike. He brought a brief case with him in order to rest the sign bearing my name Mo Yan on, but my name of course literally means “speak no words”. He went around the square and showed it to people, and, as one might imagine, no one would speak any words to him. This is a really nice story. When I leant that he actually did come to the station, I asked myself whether I would have done the same for him. I did not know the man, so why should I take care of him? And he spent all those hours walking around in the square. I certainly ought to treat him to a good meal.

Pingwa does not travel abroad as much as his peers do. In fact among the writers of his class and generation in Shaanxi, or indeed in China, he is the one who spends most time in his own country. He limits his overseas travels to a minimum. In recent years, the rest of us travel fi ve or six times per year, or even eight or nine at peak periods. Similarly, he is also the one among Shaanxi writers who spends least time outside the province. One can easily count the few times that he visited universities in Beijing. Most of us have perhaps visited one-third of all universities in the country. Pingwa rarely travels abroad or in China, and often avoids social occasions, so that he can focus on his writing. It is no surprise that he has been highly productive, creating work of the highest standard; nor is it surprising that each of his works is a landmark that challenges everything he has written before. In the forty years that have elapsed since the 1970s he has made major creative contributions in many varied aspects in the genres of short stories, novellas, novels and essays. One cannot imagine any research on contemporary Chinese literature without a close study of the works of Jia Pingwa.

I am a friend and a reader of Pingwa’s. I started writing a few years later than he did. Back then I benefi ted greatly from reading him, especially those major works of the essay genre including “Full Moon” and “The Shangzhou Series”. My name Mo Yan literally means speaking no words, but in reality I am a man who speaks many words, in fact too many of them unnecessarily. Pingwa does not call himself “no words”, he just does not indulge in speaking, but what he says is often memorable. I fi nd two things he wrote unforgettable. One of them is about the way men dress. He said men do not need new clothes. They distinguish themselves in two places: the head and the feet. As long as their shoes are shiny and their hair is glossy, theyare presentable. This was gospel to those of us who had no money for new clothes. A pair of new shoes and a jar of brilliantine were things we could afford. All it took to feel good about ourselves was to shine our shoes and apply brilliantine to our hair, and we were done.

One more thing about Pingwa is particularly noteworthy. He has often discussed the issue of his accented Putonghua. In Chinese putong means both commonplace and ordinary. He once said that only ordinary people spoke the ordinary tongue. Did Mao Zedong speak the ordinary tongue? Did Zhou Enlai? Neither spoke the ordinary tongue in the commonplace accent. One can infer from this that Jia Pingwa is a great writer since his language is in no way ordinary. The relationship between his dialect and the literary quality of his writings would constitute a fascinating research topic.

【Author】Mo Yan, contemporary Chinese writer and Nobel Laureate of Literature in 2012.

【Translator】Jessica Yeung holds a B.A. (Hons) in Translation and an M.Phil. in Comparative Literature from the University of Hong Kong, and a Ph.D. in Performing Arts Studies from Middlesex University, London. She taught as instructor and lecturer on a parttime basis at the Department of Comparative Literature and School of Continuing Studies of the University of Hong Kong, and the School of Performing Arts, Fine Arts and Design of Middlesex University. She joined the Translation Programme of Hong Kong Baptist University in 2013 as Assistant Professor, and was Associate Director of the Centre for Translation, Director of the M.A. Programme in Translation and Bilingual Communication, and currently Associate Professor and acts as Ph.D. supervisor. Her representative works include Gao Xingjian’s Writings as Cultural Translation,“On the English Translation of Zhang Chengzhi’s The Black Steed”, “On the Potential of Jia Pingwa’s Daideng in English Translation”, and “The Fictions, Films and Translations of Pema Tseden”.