Mo Yan’s Greatest Novel — A Review of Big Breasts and Wide Hips
Literary mastery at its peak; a tangled web of relationships; a story of extraordinary complexity; an imagination that knows no bounds; and the suffering of ordinary people, etched into memory. These were my impressions after finishing Big Breasts and Wide Hips. It is a great novel, and an exceptionally bold one—as its title alone suggests. When Mo Yan first chose that title, he intended to replace it once the book was finished. But when he reached the end, he found that no other title fitted, that none could convey what the book had to say. His publisher also suggested a change, but Mo Yan ultimately refused. He kept Big Breasts and Wide Hips, even if that meant being misunderstood. As he writes in his preface, the book was bound to be misread and provoke controversy. Yet that is one of literature’s attractions: it leaves room for misreading. The title readily brings pornography and vulgarity to mind, but this is actually a book about the greatness of a mother’s love. There is nothing frivolous about it. It is a profoundly serious work.
Readers are always debating which of Mo Yan’s novels is his greatest. To an author, every book is a child; choosing a favorite is no easy matter. But if you ask me, I would choose Big Breasts and Wide Hips. In imagination and attention to detail, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out is every bit its equal. The philosophical ideas in this novel, however, run deeper. I have always believed that philosophy should underpin literature. To me, a novel with gorgeous prose but no ideas cannot be great, while a novel with ideas but no literary craft amounts to a book of philosophy. Only when both are present does it qualify as literature, as a truly great work. Through its language, this novel vividly evokes the joys and sorrows, the reunions and partings, of life on the land of Gaomi. Through its philosophy, it reveals a tenacity that has grown from the soil into the Chinese people—a spirit that will inspire generation after generation of us, as well as readers around the world.
The Lives Behind the Novel
Every one of Mo Yan’s books draws on real stories and real people.
A man from Mo Yan’s hometown, Northeast Gaomi Township, was once captured by the Japanese and taken to Hokkaido as a laborer. He refused to accept his fate. Seizing an opportunity to escape, he fled into the mountains. Unable to speak the language and unfamiliar with the terrain, he lived there alone for thirteen years before finally returning to China with the help of others. Mo Yan wrote him into Big Breasts and Wide Hips as Parrot Han. What gave a man the strength to survive alone in the mountain forests for thirteen years and make it home alive? I think the answer is life itself. To be alive is to have hope; death is the end of hope. As long as we want to live, no obstacle is insurmountable.
We all have to face the challenges life throws at us. When the weight of living leaves us barely able to breathe, we might try reading about what others have endured. Realizing that every one of us carries scars within may bring some relief.
I believe the mother Mo Yan portrays in this novel shares many qualities with his own mother.
Women in the Old Society
The novel opens with the mother, Shangguan Lu, giving birth. Two things about this scene left a deep impression on me. First, this is her eighth delivery. Second, her giving birth matters less than an animal giving birth.
Shangguan Lu’s husband is infertile, yet for three years she bears the blame. Throughout those years, she endures insults and beatings from her husband and mother-in-law, suffering both mentally and physically. A woman’s inability to have children was considered unforgivable; in that society, such a woman had no value. Shangguan Lu eventually conceives her first child with her aunt’s husband, proving that she can bear children. But the baby is a girl, not a precious boy. She has to keep giving birth, because a woman who cannot produce a son is also unwanted, scorned by her husband and mother-in-law. She has a second child, a third… Six children, all girls. She is beaten about the head and burned between her legs with a branding iron, not because she has done anything wrong, but because she cannot give birth to a boy.
At her seventh delivery, the novel describes the scene this way: “You know the ropes. Take your time and have it yourself.” Shangguan Lü puts a roll of white cloth and a pair of scissors on the kang, the heated brick bed, and says impatiently, with a frown, “Your father-in-law and Laidi’s father are in the west room helping the black donkey give birth. It’s her first foal. I need to be there.” A woman about to give birth matters less than a donkey in the same condition. It makes us reflect on the absurdity of that society. And yet this does seem to have been commonplace. Shangguan Lu has already borne six girls, and her mother-in-law has little hope for the next baby. In the villages of the old days, a donkey was a farming family’s most important large animal, worth “half the family property.” To the mother-in-law, another donkey means another source of labor; another girl means another mouth to feed.
A woman who could not bear children was unacceptable. A woman who could bear children but not a son was equally unacceptable to society. This is a brutal historical reality, and it exposes a distortion of human nature and a collapse of morality.
Shangguan Lu gives birth to eight children in all: seven girls and one boy. Shangguan Lü frequently beats and abuses not only her daughter-in-law but her granddaughters too. Even near the end of her life, she clamps her teeth onto Shangguan Yunü’s ear and will not let go. Only by ending her mother-in-law’s life with her own hands can Shangguan Lu save Yunü.
Great Women
The greatest figure in the novel is unquestionably its protagonist, the mother, Shangguan Lu. Born into an age of turmoil, she loses her parents to German gunfire and goes to live with her aunt and uncle. Her aunt binds her feet, causing her enormous pain. When she grows up, she marries Shangguan Shouxi, a man who cannot father children. She is compelled to bear children by several other men. Only when she finally produces a little boy is she considered to have fulfilled the duty that women in the old society were forced to shoulder.
But giving birth is far from the end of it. Her children all seem to have inherited a taste for trouble and a reckless courage, as their fates suggest. The eldest sister is executed; the second is put to death on secret orders; the third falls to her death beneath a cliff while practicing flight; the fourth dies in later life when an illness from her years in prostitution returns; the fifth takes her own life; the sixth is lured into a cave and blown up; the seventh is fed to death; the eighth drowns herself in a river; and Shangguan Jintong—the narrator, the “I” of the story—amounts to nothing. The most bizarre of them is Jintong himself: a boy who never grows up, who has not been fully weaned even as an adult. Imagine how much suffering such a mother must endure. Shangguan Lu is undoubtedly a great mother, a mother no gale can topple, a mother worn out by life and death.
Of her children, the one I admire most is the fourth sister, Shangguan Xiangdi. At the family’s darkest hour, she sells herself to a brothel and saves them all. She is still very young. To sacrifice herself for her family in this way takes immense courage and resolve. Shangguan Xiangdi, too, is unquestionably a great woman.
Another character I deeply admire is Shangguan Yunü. Born blind, she cannot see the world, yet she has an extraordinary maturity, as though she has seen through everything. During the Three Years of Hardship, she cannot bear to see her mother suffer and finally decides to drown herself in the river. She considers herself a burden to the family. Perhaps that is why she is so undemanding, but I think it comes from a maturity that has always been part of her.
Closing Thoughts
This is the story of a mother and her children. Through it, we come to understand the greatness of maternal love. We see that it is an instinctive force, different from the impulsive force of men. It requires no deliberation and makes no calculation of costs and benefits. It endures, moves us to the core, brings forth life and nourishes it. The earth is our mother: it gives us flowers and trees, mountains and rivers, sustaining everyone, whether they love it or not. Our mothers endure countless hardships to bring us into this world, then devote their lives to caring for us, making it possible for us to grow and flourish.
I hope everyone will be willing to look past their prejudices about words and pick up this book to discover the story of a mother and her children.
I hope everyone who finishes it will feel how much mothers give, and how great they are.
To all the mothers in the world: you truly are great!
要政阳
September 15, 2026, Beijing