Nobel Prize winning Chinese author Mo Yan in his novel Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out depicts modern China as a universe parallel to and in contrast to Buddhism with a series of deaths and rebirths symbolizing movement between eternal suffering and peace.
Mo Yan writes about the madness of revolution and especially the Cultural Revolution unconstrained by his government and in direct challenge to charges against China made by Neo Cons seeking a new foe for their war machine.
Neo Cons turn a blind eye toward books by Mo Yan a writer who can be compared, by any student of literature, to French author Victor Hugo and his own descriptions of revolution in Les Miserables.
Bu Mo Yan writes not in the fashion of outraged emotion in reaction to revolutionary fervor but in a humorous yet powerful way that recalls the writing of Joseph Heller in Catch 22 and perhaps this is what disarms Chinese authorities when it comes to Mo Yan. The stupidity of violence is too funny to believe.
This is a far cry from the cardboard Neo Con portrait of the Chinese people and their life under the often invoked yoke of communist brutality. For instance, in Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out one learns of the deep hatred and mistrust of capitalism in mid Twentieth Century China but is amused and humored by it knowing that in the end capitalism triumphed so greatly in China. This leads one to wonder why China draws the ire of Neo Cons when after all they have adopted the West’s economic system so completely. Could it be that the Chinese are so good at it that this ire is nothing more than Neo Con envy?
Yes, China has a long way to go in the way of democratic reforms but it can be said that this ship has entered her harbor and only needs to dock. When that happens, will the Neo Cons still train their war cry on this giant of the East, this 5,000 year culmination of human endeavor?