I recently finished Mo Yan’s Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out. More precisely, I listened to it during my commute.

My strongest impression of the novel is how smoothly it fits together. I do not mean the twists and turns of the plot, but its construction: it begins with Lan Qiansui’s words and ends with his words, completing a perfect circle. The structure is remarkably clever. That said, in the second half, the protagonist’s friends and relatives die one after another, leaving me with the feeling that the ending does not quite live up to the beginning.

Drawing on the mythology of reincarnation through the six realms, the author uses dialogue and recollection to span more than fifty years, from the founding of the People’s Republic to around the millennium. Through ordinary people, he shows ways of life in modern China and the tangled emotions of being alive.

Plot Summary

The protagonist is Lan Qiansui, son of Lan Kaifang and Pang Fenghuang, grandson of Lan Jiefang and Huang Hezuo, and great-grandson of Lan Lian and Yingchun. He is also Ximen Nao’s sixth incarnation. Ximen Nao is reborn as a donkey, an ox, a pig, a dog, a monkey, and finally Lan Qiansui. Across these six lives, the colorful inhabitants of Northeast Gaomi Township revolve around Lan Lian’s family through the second land revolution, the people’s commune movement, the Great Famine, the Great Leap Forward, the mass steelmaking campaign, the Cultural Revolution, and reform and opening up.

Ximen Nao: Despite his many good deeds, Ximen Nao is labeled a landlord, subjected to struggle sessions, and shot by someone he once helped. After his death, the village divides up his property. His concubines marry poor peasants to rid themselves of the landlord label and sever their ties to him. People who had been poor before Liberation, such as Lan Lian, Huang Tong, and Hong Taiyue, suddenly become exemplary figures of the formerly oppressed rising to their feet.

The donkey’s troubles: Mo Yan devotes a great deal of attention to the first animal Ximen Nao becomes. From the start of collectivization, Lan Lian is an exception: he refuses to join the commune and farms independently. His only companion is the donkey that is Ximen Nao’s reincarnation. Being born into Lan Lian’s household is initially a terrible blow to the donkey. In his previous life, Lan Lian was his servant; now Lan Lian is his master, and Yingchun, once Ximen Nao’s concubine, has become Lan Lian’s wife. How is the donkey supposed to accept that? In one episode, the donkey kills two wolves, but a hunter intimidates the villagers into saying he killed them himself. I found it funny that a person would compete with a donkey for credit. Then again, perhaps our desires and emotions are exactly what can make us worse than a donkey. Later, the donkey carries Pang Hu’s wife safely to the hospital, where she gives birth to Pang Kangmei, and becomes the county magistrate’s mount. These events quietly deepen Ximen Nao’s identification with his life as a donkey. Perhaps without noticing it, he has begun to forget his earlier hatred and become a real donkey. Eventually, however, he breaks a leg while working. Although Lan Lian grieves for him, people butcher him and divide up his meat. His awful end tells us that Ximen Nao’s story is not over and prepares the way for his reunion with Lan Lian in another life.

The ox’s stubbornness: After Lan Lian buys the ox, his determined campaign to stay outside the commune and farm alone truly begins. This period also moves toward the Cultural Revolution. There are two strands: Lan Lian and the ox farming independently, and Lan Jinlong’s transformation into Ximen Jinlong. To become a young Red Guard and avoid being implicated in Lan Lian’s independent farming, Ximen Jinlong leaves with Yingchun and joins the commune. As a Red Guard, he not only cuts ties with Lan Lian and Lan Jiefang but leads others in persecuting Lan Lian, nearly blinding him. This made me think of the Cultural Revolution as a catalyst that exposes different human hearts to the blazing sun: the burns fall on other people, not those exposing them. Eventually, even Lan Jiefang betrays his father. Pursuing his own desires, he abandons family loyalty and joins the commune, leaving Lan Lian alone in his resistance. The stubbornness in this section belongs both to Lan Lian, who will not join, and to the ox. When Lan Jiefang takes the ox into the commune, it refuses to plow for them. Even as Ximen Jinlong whips it to death, the stubborn Ximen Nao will not move. Perhaps this is the voiceless resistance of every wounded creature to the commune and the Cultural Revolution.

The pig’s revelry: This is one of the novel’s longest sections. Almost as if the author has arranged it deliberately, the newborn pig is cared for briefly by Ximen Jinlong and Huang Hezuo, then taken to the commune and placed in the care of Ximen Nao’s wife, Bai. It has the flavor of the person who tied the knot being the one who must untie it, and it rounds out Bai’s later story. Through the pig’s eyes, the novel satirizes Ximen Village’s grand pig-raising farce. Against the historical background of famine, people go hungry without eating the pigs, all for the sake of supposed progressiveness and Party loyalty. The absurdity is inseparable from sorrow. We see Ximen Jinlong use his intelligence in ridiculous schemes to raise pigs on a huge scale. We also see his marriage to Hezuo and the resignation with which Lan Jiefang and Huzhu settle into life together. The author spends considerable time on the pig and Diao Xiaosan. He even describes the pig leading its own herd as a king, only for his son Ximen Jinlong to lead a group that wipes them out. I am still not sure what to make of that episode. Near the end, Hong Taiyue tries to sleep with Bai, but the pig, her former husband, interferes, and Bai hangs herself. It feels like a symbolic end to Ximen Nao’s story. The pig itself dies saving children from Ximen Village, a death entirely unlike his previous two. I will return to that difference below.

The dog’s spirit: After reform and opening up, Lan Jiefang enters government through his earlier connection to Pang Hu and eventually becomes a deputy county magistrate. Ximen Jinlong, meanwhile, uses his talents to become a wealthy businessman. His young lover, Pang Kangmei, is the county magistrate, in a position of immense power. But because Lan Jiefang loves Hezuo rather than Huzhu, he gets involved with Pang Kangmei’s sister Pang Chunmiao, twenty years his junior. He abandons his wife Huang Huzhu and son Lan Kaifang, resigns his post, and leaves with Pang Chunmiao to live as a couple in other towns and counties, away from their relatives. At the same time, his parents, Lan Lian and Yingchun, grow old and die. He never sees Yingchun again before her death. Ximen Jinlong and Pang Kangmei’s glory is also short-lived. Their collusion between business and government ends with one killed in Hong Taiyue’s suicide bombing and the other imprisoned. Only when Huang Huzhu is dying of cancer do Lan Lian and Pang Chunmiao return to Ximen Village and finally find acceptance. The dog follows Lan Kaifang all its life, eventually returns to Ximen Village, and is euthanized together with Lan Lian. From Ximen Nao’s resentful execution, to the donkey being butchered, the ox being whipped to death by his son, the pig dying to save others, and the dog’s peaceful death, we can see his resentment and attachments gradually fade across these lives, until there is nothing left to hold on to and everything dissolves away…

The monkey: After his father Ximen Jinlong dies, Ximen Huan cannot give up his long-established habit of spending money extravagantly. He leaves the county town with Pang Fenghuang. After wandering from place to place, they encounter Ximen Nao’s fifth reincarnation, the monkey, and make a living performing together. Later, Ximen Huan is beaten to death by a bully. Lan Kaifang gradually follows the path he once despised in his father: he gives up his secure police job to pursue Pang Fenghuang. After many hardships, they finally come together, only to discover that Pang Fenghuang is the daughter of Ximen Jinlong and Pang Kangmei, and that Ximen Jinlong is Lan Jiefang’s older half-brother on their mother’s side. Devastated, Lan Kaifang dies.

Lan Qiansui: Born from a relationship between close relatives, Lan Qiansui is nicknamed Big Head from birth. In this stage, apart from Lan Qiansui himself, Lan Jiefang finally pairs up with his ever-devoted Huang Huzhu, while his daughter Lan Baofeng pairs up with her own steadfast admirer, Chang Tianhong. It almost seems to say that if you pine after someone long enough, you eventually get them. That is entirely my own fanciful reading.

Reflections

Life disappoints us more often than not. A moment of success does not promise lasting success. History rolls forward and everything keeps changing; the one thing we can try to manage is our own state of mind. Remember the old story of the man who lost his horse: what looks like misfortune may turn out to be a blessing.

Likewise, people are not simply righteous or evil. Often, they stand on different sides and have different interests. Hong Taiyue and Ximen Jinlong are both products of their circumstances, part of an era’s tragedy. But are you and I not also products of our own circumstances, caught in the sadness of our own times?

Ximen Nao’s resentment and attachments carry him through the cycle of rebirth. He witnesses the bewildering spectacles of life, death, reunion, and separation, then slowly lets go and finds release. As ordinary people, our emotions also rise and fall with our surroundings. Yet why must we let them? Beneath the Buddha’s lowered gaze, life and death are both exhausting.