The narrator of the "Red Gaolian" introduces us to the history of his family, which dates back to the 20s-30s of the twentieth century in Gaomi County. The central characters of the novel - "grandmother", "grandfather" (Yu), "father" (Douguan), "uncle" (Lohan) and "second grandmother" (wEasel) lived in the very times when everything was going on in China and everyone was at war with everyone + also with the "devils" of the Japanese.
Since there is no linear plot in the novel, it is almost impossible to briefly retell the beginning without spreading the thought along the tree, but I will still try to make it easier for potential readers to assess how much they are interested in this whole mess. At the age of fifteen, the narrator's grandmother was married to a leper whose family was engaged in winemaking.
While the bride was being dragged to the groom, she managed to fall in love with one of the porters, who later, overcome with passion, killed both her husband and the father-in-law of the young beauty, thereby making her the mistress of the estate and the owner of the distillery. The Chinese passions did not subside on this, and the heroes repeatedly showed their temper, changing, quarreling, swearing, parting and coming together again, but after 16 years the war came into their lives...
What is the book about? Considering that the word "Gaolian" appears 629 times on its pages, one would assume that it is about a cereal plant that is used in China to produce literally everything. But in my opinion, this book is about passion, in its meaning, which is closest to excess, moreover, passion is not only love, any.
In fact, war is also a set of passions, its participants have all the emotions out, they themselves seem to be skinned, turned out, the adrenaline is off the scale, the mind goes beyond the mind. According to Mo Yan's concept, passion is a destructive thing, drowning in blood, forcing you to do the most terrible things, but to live without it is like not living at all, but only dragging out a miserable existence.
Goalyan is a symbol of this very passion, a plant that can hide lovers in its leaves or is used to make wine, from which they get drunk and do what they want.
I read "Red Gaolian" with difficulty, the story of a strange Chinese family did not capture me, I read it for a long time and problematically every time, but I was distracted at once. Initially, I had the idea that this novel was such a song about love and war, poetic, beautiful, heartwarming, with a story about sacrifice and loyalty, but no expectations were met.
"Red Gaolian" is more military prose than love, but if usually in military prose there is a clear concept of who, why and why is fighting, who is their own and who is someone else's, what ideas they have in their heads, then in this case the author decided not to go into the details of the civil war in China at all, and who wants what from this life is absolutely unclear.
There are some detachments, there are others, there are puppet troops, there are self-organized groups, there are highwaymen, brave and courageous, but fighting exclusively for themselves, there are, in the end, the Japanese, the very "devils" or "dogs" who will finish off those who survived before their arrival, and take away everything that the previous passing ones have not yet taken away.
One chapter of the "Red Gaolian" is completely devoted to how a group of people after another battle fights with three packs of dogs: hungry stray dogs united around three leaders, and began to feed on the corpses of those who fell in battle, which did not please the survivors who did not have time to bury their comrades and relatives.
So, in fact, all the people in the novel, Chinese or Japanese, are the same dogs that are fighting among themselves for nothing... because of a sideways glance, because of a gnawed bone, because of a pretty female.
They may no longer remember on what principle they separated, why they follow the leader red, and not green (a miracle of cynology, green dogs in China), but they still continue to "fight" on his side, even if another squabble costs them their lives. For sure, the colors of the dog's fur are not taken from the ceiling, but apart from the red Communists, in view of my ignorance of Chinese history, I am not able to identify anything.
Of all the big plot, the women's lines dedicated to the grandmother and the second grandmother liked the most, that they would like to just live, but after contacting Yu Zhanao, they got a bunch of hemorrhoids instead of a measured life with a loved one. If the narrator's first grandmother herself was from the category of "tear it off and throw it away", then it's really a pity for the Weasel.
But with pity for the rest, somehow it didn't work out, even though some kind of tin is constantly happening on the pages of the "Red Gaolian", such as shooting, flaying, blasting with a grenade and other things, it doesn't take anything for the soul, you just refer what you read to the category "the horrors of war and life in China 100 years ago".
There is a lot of cruelty and physiology, but this is not the case at all when they are given to the reader for the sake of hype, in principle, everything is in place, but if you are very impressionable, then pay attention to this fact. Well, yes, rigidity towards animals also takes place.
The main drawback of "Red Gaolian" is that the novel is mostly just boring to read, and the reader has a minimum of emotional involvement in what he has read. Everything that relates to the storyline of Douguan with his father is just a set of some kind of movements and regular battles of some kind for something.
As if thinking that Chinese proper names and a set of strange events would not be enough for the reader, the author, among other things, built the composition of the novel so that the narrative jumps from one hero to another and from one time to the past or future (and this considering that in general everything described is the narrator's distant past).
It is not difficult to build something solid and linear out of such jumps, but the process of reading and understanding it all makes it much more difficult, in the end, one begins to wonder why such torments are in general.
444.693 SRY