Disclaimer: This post was originally written in Chinese and translated into English by GPT-5.2.
Frog is one of Mo Yan’s most important works. It is said to be the product of ten years of gestation, four years of writing, and three major revisions. When the novel first appeared in early 2009, it was promoted as “a powerful full-length work that touches the most painful spot in the Chinese people’s soul.” Two years later, in 2011, Mo Yan won the 8th Mao Dun Literature Prize with Frog. The award citation reads: “His Frog reflects, through the fate of a rural doctor who has no choice, the difficulties and trials our nation has experienced in its great struggle for survival.” In 2012, Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in Literature; the creation and dissemination of Frog contributed greatly, just as he himself has stated on multiple public platforms.
As Wen Rumin has pointed out, the “transcendence” of Frog is manifested not only in its choice of the sharp, complex, and highly controversial subject of family planning, but also in the author’s truthful presentation—on both historical and spiritual levels—of the tremendous spiritual transformations brought about over nearly 30 years by the implementation of family planning in northern rural areas, bearing a humanistic concern and a philosophical height of life/survival[] . In sum, against the backdrop of sixty years of turbulent rural fertility history—especially the arduous process of advancing family planning over the latter thirty years—the novel tells of the actions and reactions of a group of little people in Gaomi Northeast Township under the circumstances of the time. The novel focuses on the life experience of Wan Xin, a rural female doctor who has worked in obstetrics and gynecology for more than fifty years, shaping a vivid, distinctive, and deeply moving image of a rural gynecologist; and, combined with the complex phenomena in the course of family planning, it analyzes the humble, awkward, conflicted, and contradictory spiritual world of intellectuals represented by the narrator Tadpole.
As far as the implications of the novel itself are concerned, the views of life and ethics contained in Frog have attracted the attention of quite a few researchers over the past nearly ten years, but it is still relatively rare to take the bioethical view as a whole for an overall review and sorting-out. The so-called bioethical view refers to corresponding norms, morality, and judgments about how to treat life that arise, in specific social and historical scenes, on the basis of a kind of collective unconscious about life that is widely prevalent in society. A bioethical view is not only an awareness of life; it is also an ethical cognition—philosophically meaningful—of how to treat life under the constraints of a network of social relations, with humans as social animals. This paper mainly starts from the characters’ simple worship of life in Frog, the ethical crisis triggered by family planning, and the philosophical reflection on life after time has passed, to explore the bioethical view contained in the novel.
Worship and awe of life run through the entirety of Frog. The book’s blurb writes that this book is “a worship of life rather than a fawning over literature,” placing the novel’s theme ahead of its literariness. Though somewhat exaggerated, it still truly reflects the importance of the theme of life in the novel.
Mo Yan is an intellectual of peasant origin, and his more than thirty years of writing have consistently held fast to “folkness,” “localness,” as well as his customary “historical writing.” As a creator, an important feature of Mo Yan’s novels is his relationship with peasants, “neither too close nor too distant”[] . Therefore, apart from the intellectual’s rational and philosophical reflection on life, what most of the novel presents is a peasant-style, local-style, or traditionally understood simple worship of life. This worship can be simply summed up in one sentence: what the I Ching calls “The great virtue of Heaven and Earth is called life.” This is a fertility worship. Fertility worship is a simple worship of life; see Liu Dalin’s Illustrated History of Sex in China.
The best example of fertility worship is the choice of the novel’s title, “Frog.” For instance, when Tadpole talks about naming the play, he explains: “Temporarily titled as the ‘wa’ in frog; of course it can also be changed to the ‘wa’ in baby; of course it can also be changed to the ‘wa’ in Nüwa. Nüwa created humans; frogs are a symbol of many offspring; frogs are the totem of our Gaomi Northeast Township. In our clay figurines and New Year prints, there are examples of frog worship.” In Part Four of the novel, Little Lion tells Tadpole that humans and frogs share the same ancestor. The reason is: tadpoles and human sperm are similar in shape, and a three-month-old infant specimen is almost exactly the same as a frog in its metamorphic stage. Whether it is the “wa” of baby, the “wa” of Nüwa who created humans, or the “wa” of frogs symbolizing many offspring, all are simple manifestations of life worship. And the reason the author ultimately settles on “Frog” as the title is not only because it is a homophone of the other two “wa,” but also because the process of frogs laying eggs symbolizes the hardships of life and endless generation. As mentioned through Aunt’s mouth in the final part of the play in the novel: “On the afternoon you were born, Aunt washed her hands by the river and saw groups of tadpoles crowding in the water. That year there was a severe drought, and there were more tadpoles than water. This scene made Aunt think: among so many tadpoles, only one in ten thousand will become a frog; most tadpoles will become silt. How similar this is to a man’s mirror: among swarms of sperm, the ones that can combine with an egg and become a baby are probably only one in ten million. At that time Aunt thought that between tadpoles and human reproduction, there is a mysterious connection.”
This naked worship of reproduction, childbirth, or life is not a cultural phenomenon unique to Gaomi Northeast Township, but has a broader traditional cultural background. The phrase “The great virtue of Heaven and Earth is called life” means that the birth of life itself has supreme value and meaning; it is the highest principle of Heaven and Earth and the original starting point of all things, beyond question. In the I Ching, similar expressions can be found everywhere:
After there are Heaven and Earth, there are the myriad things; after there are the myriad things, there are male and female; after there are male and female, there are husband and wife; after there are husband and wife, there are father and son; after there are father and son, there are ruler and minister; after there are ruler and minister, there are above and below; after there are above and below, ritual and righteousness have their proper placements. (I Ching, “Xugua Zhuan”)
Heaven and Earth unite in harmonious qi, and the myriad things transform and become rich; male and female unite essences, and the myriad things transform and are born. (“Xici Zhuan”)
Heaven and Earth interact: Tai. (Tai)
Heaven and Earth do not interact: Pi. (Pi)
The later Confucian doctrine’s saying “Among the three forms of unfilial conduct, having no heir is the greatest” is also in the same lineage. In the I Ching, whether Heaven and Earth interact is even regarded as an omen of good (Tai) or bad (Pi); its supreme status can thus be seen.
At the beginning of Frog, it is written that Gaomi Northeast Township has an old custom: when a child is born, it is named after body parts and human organs, such as Chen Nose, Zhao Eye, Wu Large Intestine, Sun Shoulder… Tadpole thinks this is probably driven by the psychology that “a lowly name brings long life,” or a psychological evolution from the mother’s belief that the child is a piece of flesh from her own body. But from another angle, using human physiological organs to name children—not minding a lowly name but seeking long life—actually reflects precisely the peasants’ or traditional China’s simple worship of the value of life. Precisely because it is a simple worship, it does not take the lowliness of the name seriously.
Without understanding the book’s characters’ simple worship of life, one cannot understand the subsequent behavior of the villagers who, regardless of the harsh and strict family planning, tried every means to “give birth in secret” and gamble with it using their lives; nor can one understand Aunt Wan Xin’s lofty status in the locality in the early years after Liberation as a “Goddess Who Delivers Children” and a “Living Bodhisattva,” and the huge gap afterward when she was cursed as a “whore, a bitch, and a murderous demon king,” and the ethical crisis implied behind it. Of course, all this likewise shows the difficulty and twists and turns of implementing family planning, as a basic state policy, in rural areas at the time.
An ethical crisis occurs within an orderly group. In a wild society, or in times of chaos, ethical crises do not occur as frequently as in a fixed group or an orderly society. An ethical crisis actually reflects the eternal conflict between civilized norms and human instinct, and is also an inexhaustible theme of literary creation.
Quite a few scholars studying Mo Yan’s novels have discovered the key thread of “the degeneration of the stock.” For example, Zhao Gedong points out that the character genealogy in Mo Yan’s early novels is a tribal group with theoretical blood relations, whose axis is composed of grandfather (Yu Zhanao), grandmother (Dai Fenglian), father (Douguan), and “I,” spanning three generations of grandparents and grandson. With the historical decline from the “Red Sorghum family” to the “Grass-eating family” as a reference, Mo Yan’s novelistic creation in the 1980s enacted a life allegory of “the degeneration of the stock.” In a certain sense, the allegory of “the degeneration of the stock” not only constitutes the life consciousness of Mo Yan’s early novels, but also overall constitutes the life tone of his creation[].
“The degeneration of the stock” may be a kind of regret on Mo Yan’s part, but judging from his historical writing method, the vigorous wildness and exuberant vitality in the sorghum fields of “Red Sorghum” highlight the nation’s blood-qi and a “barbaric” will to live. Following this theme of raw, primitive life force downward, we can unearth an even more profound theme of civilizational critique; starting from this, Mo Yan found the universal survival predicament of modern people. The diminishing vitality presented in the lineage chain of the “Red Sorghum” clan reflects precisely modern civilization’s suppression of the human spirit and psyche, so Mo Yan needs in his works to long for a state of full liberation of the senses and the body. Zhao Yue points out: “Because his love for tradition is genuine, Mo Yan wants to splash it out in his works with nearly crazed language. The past always stands before reality in Mo Yan’s novels in a sharply antagonistic posture. Between the ancestors with unrestrained life and legendary experiences and the descendants whose humanity is suppressed and twisted, between the glorious radiance of the past and the sordid modern life, the ramparts are clear.”[] This may be the psychological mechanism behind the origin of “the degeneration of the stock.”
However, Frog does not, in theme, follow the same line as the past “degeneration of the stock.” On the contrary, this novel not only is not unrestrained and torrential in language, but in its characterization it also does not single-mindedly depict the villagers’ yielding in the early bloody enforcement of family planning; rather, it highlights the little people’s struggle to the death against this national policy. Of course, the result of this struggle to the death is a deeper civilizational assimilation and suppression. After all unyielding resistance ends in death, what remains is helpless obedience or a humble, awkward, two-faced order (such as the underground “surrogacy” market). This is China’s modernization process reflected through a history of childbirth.
“The supreme status of life endows reproduction with unquestionable legitimacy and solemnity.”[] The root of the ethical crisis in Frog lies in the contradiction between the cultural tradition of reproduction supremacy and the historical trend of population control. This contradiction first erupts in the bloody conflict between pregnant women insisting on illegally “having children” and Aunt Wan Xin’s resolute determination to curb out-of-plan births. Sterilizing men who have already had children and forcing abortions on already pregnant women who have already given birth are the two major matters of “Aunt,” the novel’s central figure, and many plotlines unfold around these matters. If villagers resist, enforcement is coerced, not hesitating to tear down houses and even drive people to death. When the family of an “illegal second child” hides the pregnant woman and refuses to hand her over, Aunt drives a tractor and leads people to pull down the pregnant woman’s house. The local policy of “If you drink poison we seize the bottle! If you want to hang yourself we’ll supply the rope,” and the political doctrine that “Before you come out of the ‘kitchen door,’ you’re just a piece of flesh—if it needs scraping, scrape it; if it needs aborting, abort it,” make the will of the state override individual life, causing a series of tragedies: the brutality of Geng Xiulian struggling through the water while heavily pregnant, the bitterness of Wang Renmei climbing out of the cellar covered in dust, the tragic grandeur of Wang Dan, only 70 centimeters tall, yet with an enormous belly, soaked in bloody water, and the humiliation of Chen Mei, disfigured, whose hard-won life conceived was taken away.
Second, the contradiction is also embodied in the theoretical difficulties triggered by concrete operational execution of family planning. As Wen Rumin has pointed out[1]: how strong—and even somewhat “cold-blooded”—a character Aunt is, and this is also her helplessness as a family planning cadre; but her special view of life is worth noting: she cannot allow the child to come out of the “kitchen door”; she can perform an abortion for a pregnant woman, but once the child comes out of the “kitchen door,” it truly becomes a person, an individual, and his right to live must be respected and carefully protected. Aunt, on the one hand, must protect children already born, and on the other hand constantly strangles unborn fetuses. Such contradictions repeatedly appear in Mo Yan’s Frog, almost becoming a major issue that runs across the reader’s view and forces us to think: does a fetus possess the meaning of life? Do humans have the right to decide whether a fetus can be born? From where should our respect for life begin? Can we, from the philosophical height of life, explain the rationality of family planning? How exactly can we resolve—or can we resolve at all—the huge contradiction between humans’ instinct to reproduce and society’s development?
When historical rationality conflicts with culture’s collective unconscious, when the elements that life should possess are disputed in theory, the ethical crisis triggered by life in fact embodies a kind of life consciousness—this is no longer a simple worship of life, but an awe of life maintained even after multiple predicaments. This awe is mainly embodied in the epistolary “author” Tadpole and Aunt, who both once was responsible for delivering babies and ultimately was responsible for family planning. Their awe of life comes from their personal experience of life’s sin and punishment.
With policy changes, Tadpole’s soul struggles between human conscience and social temptation; afterward, his heart is tormented by his own evil, leading him to repent and atone. “Aunt” is a rural doctor with a complex identity; her bumpy fate runs through the entire novel. During the Anti-Japanese War she once, together with her father, bravely ventured into Pinggu; later, because her boyfriend fled to Taiwan, she incurred a lifetime of infamy. When young, she was a supporter and enforcer of the national policy of family planning; in old age, she turns a blind eye to “my” out-of-plan birth. In the last letter Tadpole writes to Sugitani Yoshito, he expresses it this way: “I originally thought that writing could become a way of atonement, but after the script was completed, the sense of guilt in my heart not only did not lessen, it instead became even heavier.” Everything on the surface seems to have passed and become calm, yet “my” heart is not calm, because I discover that I am the true culprit. It was not others; it was “I,” for pitiful selfish motives, who caused the deaths of Wang Renmei and her child, and afterward it was “I” again who mistakenly treated the child Chen Mei gave birth to as the child that had long since died in Wang Renmei’s womb, in order to seek self-comfort. Tadpole’s sense of guilt originates from the strangling of life, and thus he develops an inner attitude of negating his own actions. Frog vividly displays Tadpole’s process from committing sin to repentance and then to atonement.
Finally, as Li Yanzhu’s research has found, in Frog, this theme of “sin and punishment” is deepened on four levels. The first level is the already existing issue of “guilt” and “redemption” in international war (World War II). The crimes committed by the Japanese commander Sugitani on Chinese soil, and in his son Sugitani Yoshito’s heart, he still believes he should bear the obligation of “redemption.” In Sugitani Yoshito’s letter to Qiu Xian, he states that he wants to apologize to the Chinese people on behalf of his deceased father. The second level is the “guilt” and “redemption” consciousness produced by China’s women-and-infant doctors represented by Wan Xin (Aunt), who practiced “family planning” and, due to implementing “local policies,” forcibly carried out induced abortions. The third level is the sense of “guilt” and “redemption” produced by “underground surrogacy” represented by Chen Mei. This figure raises a new “guilt” and “redemption” consciousness generated amid technological development (test-tube babies) and the tide of the market economy. The fourth level is writer Qiu Xian’s sense of “guilt” and “redemption”: he believes it was he who sent his wife Wang Renmei and the son in her womb into hell. The work’s depiction of these “guilt” and “redemption” experiences of four different natures and different strata of people shares a common point: respect for human life and ultimate concern for life. The questioning on these four levels enriches the connotation of the text’s bioethical view and is thought-provoking.
Frog is Mo Yan’s representative work. With Gaomi Northeast Township and China’s fertility history over the past sixty years—especially the family planning history of the past thirty years—as its historical background, the novel revolves around Aunt Wan Xin, a rural doctor and an enforcer of family planning, and profoundly depicts the spiritual transformations reflected by a group of villagers who hold a simple worship of life as policies change. Under the operation of the historical logic of “population control,” the villagers’ reproductive activities and desires are harshly controlled and suppressed, and the main enforcer of this process is the novel’s protagonist Wan Xin. It is precisely through this brutal yet truthful historical writing that the novel expresses awe of life and a complex, profound bioethical view.
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