Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh: A Novel
Mo Yan, Howard Goldblatt
Language: English
Pages: 189
ISBN: 1611457351
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
His passion for writing shaped by his own experience of almost unimaginable poverty as a child, Mo Yan uses his talent to expose the harsh abuses of an oppressive society. In these stories he writes of those who suffer, physically and spiritually, under its yoke: the newly unemployed factory worker who hits upon an ingenious financial opportunity; two former lovers revisiting their passion fleetingly before returning to their spouses; young couples willing to pay for a place to share their love in private; the abandoned baby brought home by a soldier to his unsympathetic wife; the impoverished child who must subsist on a diet of iron and steel; the young bride willing to go to any length to escape an odious, arranged marriage. Never didactic, Mo’s fiction ranges from tragedy to wicked satire, rage to whimsy, magical fable to harsh realism, from impassioned pleas on behalf of struggling workers to paeans to romantic love.
break down the door, I pounded on the windows, I shouted, and hurt myself doing it, but no sound inside, not even a whisper… .” Little Hu laid down his vacuum bottle and sat on a stool across from the sofa. He took out a pack of cigarettes, put one in his mouth and lit it. With his head lowered, he took a deep drag, then looked up. “Shifu,” he said, “take it easy.” He took out another cigarette, handed it to old Ding, and lit it for him. “Maybe they fell asleep. That sort of activity can tire a
your daughter down from there.” “She's always been a strong-willed girl. She might not listen to me,” Yanyan's mother admitted sadly. “This is no time to be shy, old auntie,” the policeman said. “Call her down.” With mincing steps on tiny, bound feet, Yanyan's mother moved over to the tree where her daughter was perched, tilted her head back, and called out tearfully, “Yanyan, be a good girl and listen to your mother. Please come down. … I know you feel you've been treated badly, but that
gall bladder. Very carefully, he separated it from the liver with the tip of his knife, then held it in the palm of his hand to examine it. The thing was moist and slippery and, in the sunlight, had a sheen. Sort of like a piece of fine purple jade. Father handed me the gall bladder. “Hold this carefully while I take out Luan Fengshan's gall bladder.” This time, Father performed like an experienced surgeon: deft, quick, exact. First he cut away the hemp cord that was all Luan Fengshan could
to go?” “How should I know? But this way seems wrong.” Then, softening his tone of voice, he said, “You're the driver, you know the way better than I do.” “I'm glad to hear you say that,” the driver replied scornfully. “This is a shortcut. It'll shorten the trip by at least three kilometers.” “Thank you,” he said. “I was going to knock off for the day to go home and get some sleep,” the driver said. “Who in his right mind would be out in weather like this? I just felt sorry for you folks… .”
seldom repaid in kind” is a law of the universe. You may think yourself virtuous for rescuing someone from the jaws of hell, but others will assume that your actions are self-serving, even destructive! From now on, you won't catch me performing any good deeds. That doesn't mean, of course, that I'll turn to evil. I suffered greatly because of that infant girl, and could feel it coming even as I carried her out of the sunflower field. I was the only passenger in the rickety bus that had delivered