Red Locust—Mo Yan's Best: Mo Yan's Best

Author: Mo Yan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-04-01
Features: Mo Yan, a renowned contemporary Chinese writer, is celebrated in the Chinese literary world for his unique creative techniques. To date, he has published nearly ten full-length novels and over a hundred short stories and novellas. His novels are known for their vibrant colors, novel sensations, and rich, distinctive imagery, creating an artistic world in the northeast countryside of Gaomi County, reminiscent of Macondo in Gabriel García Márquez's works. Some critics have even remarked that Mo Yan is China's own Gabriel García Márquez. Memories of rural life serve as the and background for many of Mo Yan's literary works. In Gaomi County, on the Jiaodong Peninsula, two devastating locust plagues occurred around 50 years ago.
Fifty years ago, under the leadership of the Fourth Lord, the people of the northeast countryside of Gaomi County spent a fortune building a locust temple and praying to the locust god to drive away the rampant locusts. However, the locusts, with their vigorous vitality and reproductive capacity, surged forward in an endless tide. Later, under the guidance of the Ninth Lord, the locust temple was destroyed, and the locust god was driven away. All methods were exhausted to exterminate the locusts, and even General Liu was summoned, but the locusts remained undiminished. During this locust plague, Fourth Mother and her lover also perished.
Fifty years later, with the help of the People's Liberation Army and scientists, the people finally succeeded in defeating the locusts.