Ma Jian's "Stick Out Your Tongue"

Here is the review as taken from The Star Bookshelf section
http://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2006/7/28/lifebookshelf/14397977&sec=lifebookshelf





Stick Out Your Tongue
Author: Ma Jian
Translator: Flora Drew
Publisher: Chatto & Windus



Sensitively translated from Chinese, Stick Out Your Tongue is the kind of work, maybe because of its subject matter and the political persecution faced by its author, that would be lauded by literary circles, as well as human rights and cultural activists worldwide. It is the kind of work that would be eagerly picked up and read by westerners who want to see what the author had to say about the exotic East, especially one that is as elusive and far from international limelight as Tibet. However, credit is due to the author for not promoting rose-tinted exoticism, and for drawing out the humanity of the characters in his stories, thus making these ordinary actors memorable. It seems that nowadays, whether amongst popular fiction or its more literary siblings, nondescript characters buck the trend and the onus is on the author to spin either entertaining or fascinating narratives out of them.

Stick Out Your Tongue is a collection of five reminiscences and oral tales, which blur the lines between fiction and reality (a style that seemed to permeate a number of the stories I’ve read from Chinese authors, especially those writing about Tibet). In fact, the title of the book was inspired by the tragic tale of a young girl, under the title “The Eight-Fanged Roach”. She was given the name Metok, and was both a product of incest as well as a victim of incest. There is a strong Oedipal complex attached to this story, and the tragedy of incest that had entrapped her father to first impregnate his own mother, and then forced his daughter into sexual intercourse when drunk, had the aura of a Freudian case study, and highlights the universality of incest and tabooed sexual desires. She married an abusive man and finally lost her mind and lived like a bitch (pun intended) on the streets of Lhasa.

When Ma Jian writes in the afterword that the Chinese government had banned this book of his by calling him a purveyor of pornography, it is perhaps due to sexual tension that permeates his stories, and his breaking the taboo in allowing sex to colour his characters. Even the least sexual of his stories “The Smile of Lake Drolmula”, illustrates the unspoken obsession of a young boy, who left his familial hearth in the highlands for the city to further his education in a local high school, with his sister who was approaching womanhood. “The Woman and the Blue Sky” is the story of a woman who practiced polyandry, more out of necessity than real desire, in order to escape the clutches of her lecherous adoptive father. Prior to her marriage, she had been intimate with a soldier, who narrated this story to the author. “The Golden Crown” was about silversmith and his dead lover, the latter depicted as a very sexual woman, who suffered the penalty for her wantonness when she became trapped on the stupa built by her former husband in her bid to wrest the golden crown resting on it. The “Final Initiation”, despite being about the initiation of a young female lama who was an incarnation of a Living Buddha, included sex in one of the rites. Perhaps you might have heard of Tantric Buddhism, which is completely different from the form of Buddhism practiced by most conservative Malaysians. The pubescent girl-lama tragically died during her initiation, when she had to meditate in nude on top of a frozen river.

More importantly, in each of the story, the foibles of the human race is sympathetically depicted, with an awareness of the dejected lives of the people who populated the plateau, thus making each tale an illustration of a world that is both harsh and hostile, as well as patient and determined. At the same time, they show how kindness can be masked under cruelty, and helplessness can be taken advantage of. In a style that speaks directly to the reader, yet poetic, Ma Jian brings us memorable images of the Tibetan highlands that we are unlikely to forget in a hurry.