Shifu, You'll Do Anything For A Laugh (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh: This is the first story of the book, it's more of a novella or a novelette, since it's 53 pages. Most of the short stories in this book include the theme of poverty in China. Shifu is an old factory worker who is laid off from his job, and he is unable to find a job due to his age and heath. Shifu is kind and hard-working and the last time he gets paid off is by getting fired. He is also childless and his wife depends on him to bring money home. He is also very clumsy, which complicates his situation further because he eventually couldn't afford to pay for the medical bills. Eventually he ends up in a cemetery where a dilapidated bus is located. In that bus, a young couple makes love and gives Shifu the idea of making a 'love hotel' where young couples pay to spend some time together. So this business becomes successful and he gets really insecure, he thinks that he will get in trouble with the government for shady business. He sees a middle aged couple crawl into the bus after they pay and never come out. He later finds out that his worry was nothing. Shifu is pretty light hearted compared to the other stories, it's has a bit of sarcastic humor and it's a bit satirical. I actually found this story humorous. It's one of those really weird stories that puts a smile on people's face.Man and Beast: The second story is pretty violent, a battle between a man and a fox who was forced to live in a cave out in the wild when the Japanese invaded China during World War II. After he wins the battle with the fox, he begins to venture out of the wild and comes upon a Japanese village, he attacks a Japanese woman, but when he regains his humanity, he lets her live. It's a story of humanity and forgiveness during a time of bloodshed and war. The ending was very touching and probably one of my favorites in this book. Soaring: This is one of the shortest, or felt like one of the shortest stories in this book. This is one of the more 'magical' like stories like Man and the Beast. This one is about a woman who refuses to follow old Chinese values, she regains the ability to fly away from her husband. Unfortunately, she ends up getting the village's way the hard way. I'm not sure why, maybe I'm sick in the head, but I actually found this story amusing, I wish I can fly away from my problems with the flapping of my hands.Iron Child: This is a modern fairy tale in my opinion, it's about a starving child who meets an Iron Child, they both have the ability to eat iron. They run around the village and factories eating iron to sustain their never ending hunger. I actually really love this one more than Man and Beast because it was like a modern version of a fantasy tale that I read when I was younger. The Cure: This is one of the more darker stories where public execution and the stealing of organs is involved. Three people are executed and a father and son extract a gall bladder to cure a grandmother's sickness. This is one of those stories where Mo Yan portrays corruption, desperation, and the deterioration of society.Love Story: This story doesn't really stand out. It's a simple story about a boy falling in love with a girl who is a few years older than him. He feels like a mere child and she is a beautiful woman. He is in love with her maturity and feels that his love would never be requited because of the age gap. However, since it is a love story, of course this love is accomplished by the end of the story because she's been 'wanting it' anyway. It's also a sort of coming of age story since he was the only one that showed kindness towards her while everyone makes fun of him for it.Shen Garden: So here is a story about two middle aged people who knew each other when they were younger, they were probably a couple. The woman is slightly ill and they both want to be around each other for the sake of memories and affection. The woman wants to go to Shen Garden, the man who liked her, didn't know where the garden was. They go in a taxi and embark on the journey to this garden but end up going somewhere isn't really the Shen garden but the woman probably didn't really know or gave up trying to go. They try their best to make the best of the trip, they end falling in love with the nature and growing close together. It's another sweet story.Abandoned Child: This is the last story that left me with a sullen feeling, which makes it one of the best. It's involves poverty, the One Child Policy, and the obsession with the preference for boys. The main character is a writer and his mindset is a lot more modern than the rest of the villagers. He hates humanity for it's narrow mindness and lack of empathy. He rescues an abandoned baby girl and feels rather down when he encounters a bunch of misfortunes and the disapproval of his wife and family. He talks about how he hates humanity but finds peace in nature, specifically the sunflower gardens. He seems to find comfort alone in nature, loves the abandoned child, and he hates the corrupt people around him.Mo Yan writes beautiful stories, the language is poetic and the descriptions are vivid. The stories are entertaining, but dark and cringe worthy. A lot of the stories were influenced by his childhood of poverty and the destruction of humane thinking after the Cultural Revolution. The stories are dark yet beautiful all at the same time, they feel like fairy tales created in a modern era. This book was a good read light read that I really needed.
Reading this was a good exercise in expanding my personal, hopefully not too xenophobic, horizons. This collection of short stories had an interesting preface by the author, a mini autobiography describing his passion and inspiration for writing. He describes his early childhood during the cultural revolution and how he developed a resilience to adversity. He also describes the fact that he has no formal training, let alone Western influences on his writing. This is important, because you really must do a mental reset in order to appreciate and hopefully enjoy the stories.All the stories I appreciated. Only a couple of them did I actually enjoy. In several cases, I didn't get the meaning or symbolism. I'm not a short story person. Add to that the fact that several had a magical realism flavor, and my enjoyment was destined to be an uphill battle. All the stories seemed to end abruptly. Needless to say, this was not my reading happy place. Thoughts on the individual stories...Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh. A laid off worker gets creative in funding his retirement. This was mostly light hearted, but did have a few dark moments.Man and Beast - I'll be honest, I didn't get this one. A cave, a fox, Japanese, rape. Soaring - a wife bird gets shot with an arrow and killed. I am sure there is meaning in the perils of freedom.Iron Child - Kids eat iron and turn into iron... iron zombies? This story might be making some sort of statement about state run industry, poverty and neglect. Or it might just be a fanciful play on a childhood memory of feasting on coal.The Cure. This story was creepy and disturbing. It featured public execution and organ harvesting. Corruption too, with a father offering the services of his 18 year old daughter to a public official, o_O. IDGILove Story - This one had the best line in the entire book... Tall girl, short boy — tits in the face, what a joy. What I want to know is, did this rhyme in Mandarin?Shen Garden - journey to a mysterious garden, meaning lost on me.Abandoned Child. Well that was depressing. This story tackles ham fisted one-child policy as well as the deeply ingrained misogyny of Chinese culture.
What do You think about Shifu, You'll Do Anything For A Laugh (2003)?
The blurb from Kenzaburo Oe on the front of the book says, quite simply, "If I were to choose a Nobel Laureate it would be Mo Yan." I think the esteemed Oe would have a good case to make. This short story collection is very revealing about Mo Yan and his purpose in writing. In his introduction, Mo discusses his direction to become a writer after a life of poverty, where a shipment of coal becomes a feast for the villagers. Several of these stories may seem incomplete at first glance, but Mo's introduction brings light to the fact that he is out to reveal a basic love of humanity in his work as well as a desire for justice. In the title story, certainly and focal point of this collection, Ding Shikou is laid off from work just one month before retirement. Silly, simple man that he is, he believes the kind words of the politicians and supervisors who give him encouraging words and even tries to see them when they've invited him to come see them at any time. But of course, they are liars, and that is what is at the root of Mo's work--the struggle of humans against powers stronger than them. Sometimes the humans take some kind of victory, as Ding Shikou does in becoming an entrepreneur by turning a rundown bus into a retreat for lovers (by the hour), but when they are victorious in any way, a price is paid. Ding suffers loss of pride, but fortunately not his humanity and in the end cannot be as greedy and ruthless as those who put him out in the first place. It is this kind of ideal that drives the other stories in this collection as well. "Man and Beast" and "Iron Child" are tales laced with magic about the struggles of soldiers and children to maintain their humanity in the face of unmerciful Japanese soldiers or abandonment by parents. In "Man and Beast," the narrator's grandfather learns compassion even for his enemies, while in "Iron Child," an abandoned child learns to live as an iron demon. Even is fantastical tales like "Soaring," a woman who can sprout wings is surrounded by cold traditionalists who insist upon her arranged marriage. The humans of Mo's work are beset on all sides and sometimes cannot overcome at all, but the best stories in this collection sing of the human spirit and its endless fight.
—Richard
I'm not a big short story person, since I'm usually confused and wanting more by the end. As expected, I was left scratching my head at most of the stories in Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh. However, besides my inability to fully appreciate this literary style, I felt that cultural differences were another reason I couldn't grasp the depth of each piece. For instance, certain demons/fairies in Chinese culture may be symbolic, but I couldn't comprehend that extra layer. A few of the stories I fully understood and appreciated, but those were the ones that were pretty cut-and-dry without intricate allegorical references.Again, I'm probably not the best person to review and rate a collection of short stories. However, if you're a fan of them, I would recommend giving Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh a try.
—Noor
This book left me with mixed emotions. This is one of the books I set out to read as a "light" read, and in the end it turned out to have demanded a considerable amount of mental energy. Now, I have read enough to avoid the condescending idea that a piece of literature will provide an introduction to this or that culture, if anything just the opposite. Therefore, whenever I get to read literature, I seek for common, universal references, with an original voice. Perhaps it is personal, because of the fact that despite my native is not English, I read a lot in English about the English-speaking world, I developed this sensitivity for the commonalities, rather than particularities. And what is more universal than feelings? The most powerful emotion is desperation and contempt for my kind and for myself. In the end, I was left with the conundrum of "circumstantial morality": I realized (once again) that it is the circumstances in which I find myself that make my dark side "disappear"; the harsher realities that most of the people around the world are exposed to, especially poverty, got me thinking the triviality of my moral questions compared to these peoples', and got me confusing whether they are the ones living in "magic reality", or am I? (I was especially struck by the "Abandoned Child", being an expectant father of a baby girl.)At times, Mo Yan's voice sounds like an overly didactic, condescending but idealistic school teacher: but he should be given the benefit of the doubt of living in a country where "culture" has been shaped by a "revolution"; and everything being written is overseen. Which, I think, does not steal from Mo Yan's art; literature has been proven to bloom under intellectually or otherwise "constrained circumstances", and yes, at times, by compromising.I was happy in the end to see that the stories in this book can hardly be labeled as belonging to a certain style; I found Mo Yan's style diverse and rich. As a newbie to Chinese literature, I think the complicated relationship between the present and the past of China has a lot to offer, at least in terms of literature.
—S. E.
