Red Sorghum by Mo Yan

• Born: February 17, 1955
• Birthplace: Gaomi, Shandong, China

Pseudonym: Mo Yan

First published: Hung kao liang chia tsu, 1987 (English translation, 1993)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Historical

Time of plot: 1923–76

Locale: Northeast Gaomi Township, Shandong Province, China

Principal Characters

The unnamed narrator

Yu Zhan’ao, his grandfather

Dai Fenglian, his grandmother

Douguan, his father

Arhat Liu, the foreman at Dai Fenglian’s distillery

The Story

Through a postmodernist plot that employs many flashbacks and flash-forwards, Red Sorghum tells the story of an attack by Chinese resistance fighters on a Japanese convoy in occupied China during World War II. Key occurrences are told more than once, often from different points of view.

On August 9, 1939, after saying good-bye to his lover Dai Fenglian, resistance commander Yu Zhan’ao takes along his son, Douguan, to prepare for an ambush on a Japanese truck convoy. Yu and his fighters plan the ambush because of the brutality of the Japanese who occupy the land around their village in Northeast Gaomi Township in China’s Shandong Province. This land is famous for its vast sorghum fields that blossom in red color. Sorghum provides the farmers with food and wine.

The year before the ambush, the Japanese and their Chinese collaborators conscripted the local peasants to cut a road through the sorghum fields. When Arhat Liu, the foreman of Dai Fenglian’s sorghum wine distillery, resisted, the Japanese ordered him skinned alive.

As the soldiers lie in ambush, Yu orders Douguan to have his mother, Dai, bring a lunch of "fistcakes," a local dish made with sorghum flour. Here, the story flashes back to tell how, in 1923, sixteen-year-old Dai was betrothed to Shan Bianlang, son of a rich sorghum wine–making family. Yu serves as one of the bearers of her bridal sedan chair, bringing her from her home village to that of Shan’s, where most of the story takes place. Waylaid on the road, Yu saves Dai from a hapless bandit.

Returning to the present of 1939, the Japanese trucks appear on the road just as Dai comes along with the food. Without warning the Japanese fire a machine gun salvo at her and a woman companion, mortally wounding Dai. As she is dying, Dai reveals to Douguan that Yu is his real father.

Yu and his fighters successfully ambush the Japanese. They manage to kill most of the soldiers, including an old general. After the battle, Yu rushes to Dai, only to watch her die.

These core events are revisited and retold, together with side stories, in the four chapters that follow. Chapter 2 details Dai and Yu’s early relationship. Three days after her wedding, Dai is allowed to visit her home village. On the way, Yu accosts her, and they have sex in the sorghum fields. While Dai is away, Yu kills Dai’s husband and his father. When Dai returns, local magistrate Nine Dreams Cao holds a trial. A local bandit, Spotted Neck, is wrongly accused of the murder. Dai inherits the distillery and charges loyal Arhat Liu with operating it. This flashback is followed by a description of the funeral for Dai and fifty other fallen villagers and fighters in August 1939.

The plot returns to 1923, and Yu arrives at Dai’s distillery. She receives him coldly at first before she accepts him as her lover. Flashing forward to 1939, the Japanese destroy Dai and Yu’s native village as revenge for the ambush. At fifteen, the narrator’s future mother survives this destruction by hiding at the bottom of a dry well. Yu and Douguan save her after the Japanese have left the ruined village.

Chapter 3 tells primarily of the battle in late fall of 1939 that Yu, Douguan, and the few other survivors fight with the masterless dogs of the murdered villagers. The dogs have become wild and seek to feed on the human corpses lying on the outskirts of the destroyed village. The people win the battle. One dog leading the pack, Red, who belonged to Dai, fiercely wounds Douguan before Yu kills it.

Chapter four tells of the planned formal funeral of Dai in April 1941. Her corpse is exhumed and placed into a splendid coffin that Yu extracts from a rich old man. On the day of the funeral, Yu’s paramilitary resistance fighters of the Iron Society clash first with another, hostile local resistance group, the Jiao-Gao soldiers. At the height of their battle, they are attacked and overwhelmed by Chinese nationalist troops. Suddenly, these troops are attacked by the Japanese. Then, all three Chinese groups fight the Japanese in a battle, the outcome of which is not told.

Chapter 5 tells of the death of Passion, Dai’s maid and Yu’s second lover. The Japanese, who have attacked and occupied part of China, raid the village of Saltwater Gap. There, Yu has installed Passion and their five-year-old daughter, Xiangguan. Six Japanese soldiers break into Passion’s compound. She is three months pregnant. They kill her daughter and brutally gang-rape her, leaving her for dead. Yu comes and brings her back to his home with Dai. There, Passion dies cursing Dai, her rival in love. In 1976, the narrator revisits Passion’s grave. He is disturbed that a hybrid sorghum has replaced the native species on the land.

Bibliography

Chan, Shelley W. "From Fatherland to Motherland: On Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum and Full Breasts and Wide Hips." World Literature Today 74.3 (2000): 495–500. Literary Reference Center. Web. 1 May 2014. <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=3848084&site=lrc-live.>

Davis-Undiano, Robert. "A Westerner’s Reflection on Mo Yan." Chinese Literature Today 3.1–2 (2013): 21–25. Print.

Li, Peter. "War and Modernity in Chinese Military Fiction." Society 34.5 (1997): 77–89. Print.

Stuckey, G. Andrew. "Memory or Fantasy? Honggaoliang’s Narrator." Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 18.2 (2006): 131–62. Print.

Zhang, Qinghua. "The Nobel Prize, Mo Yan, and Contemporary Literature in China." Chinese Literature Today 3.1–2 (2013): 17–20. Print.