Mo Yan - Frog

In late 1965, the population explosion was a source of considerable pressure on the leadership. As the first family-planning policy in New China peaked, the government proposed: One is good, two is just right, three is too many. When the county film unit came to town, before the movie started, family-planning slides went up on the screen. Enlarged images of male and female genitalia produced queer shrieks and wild laughter from the viewers in their seats. We youngsters contributed mightily to the commotion as many young hands — boys and girls — came together on the sly. The birth control propaganda acted like an aphrodisiac. The country drama troupe split into a dozen small teams that went into the villages to perform the short play Half the Sky , that criticised favouring boys over girls.

By then Gugu had been promoted to director of the health centre’s obstetrics department and deputy head of the commune’s family-planning steering committee. The Party secretary, Qin Shan, was listed as committee head, but he was a figurehead, leaving the actual responsibilities of leading, organising and implementing family-planning policy for the whole commune to her.

Gugu had put on a bit of weight; her teeth, whose whiteness had been the source of so much envy, had begun to yellow as her work schedule hardly even allowed time to brush her teeth. A male-like hoarseness crept into her voice, as we heard over the loudspeakers on a number of occasions.

Gugu’s announcements invariably opened in the same way: People do what they’re best at and peddle the goods they have. I’ll stay with mine, so today I want to talk to you about family planning…

The prestige she’d once enjoyed was on the decline during those days; even village women who had benefited from her counsel and attention began to cool towards her. She worked diligently in the service of family planning, but with meagre results. In the village she became isolated.

One day the county drama troupe came. When the female lead sang out, The times have changed: boys and girls are equal. Wang Gan’s father, Wang Jiao, shouted out from beneath the stage, Bullshit! Equal? How dare you say they’re equal! His outburst was echoed by those around him — catcalls and unfriendly shouts. Then came the missiles — chunks of brick and roof tiles — that were hurled onto the stage, sending the actors scurrying like scared rats. Wang Jiao had finished off a half jin of liquor that day — courage in a bottle — and his wild nature surfaced. Pushing people out of his way, he jumped up onto the stage, wobbling unsteadily as he stated his case with unrestrained gestures: You people can govern heaven and earth, but who says you can govern common people about having kids? Get some twine and sew up women’s openings if you think you’re up to it. That was greeted by roars of laughter, which further energised him; picking up a broken roof tile, he took aim at the bright gas lantern hanging from a railing in front of the screen and hurled it. The lantern went out, leaving the area in darkness. Wang Jiao spent the next two weeks in lockup, but was unrepentant upon his release. If you’re man enough, he railed at just about everyone he met, just try to cut off my dick!

Gugu had drawn large enthusiastic crowds upon her return home years before. But now, on the rare visit, she was shunned by nearly everyone. Gugu, Mother once asked her, this family-planning business, was it your idea or were you following orders?

What do you mean, my idea? Gugu replied testily. It’s the call of the Party, a directive by Chairman Mao, national policy. Chairman Mao has said: Mankind must control itself, people must learn to embrace viable population growth.

Mother just shook her head. Since the beginning of time, having children has been governed by nature. During the Han dynasty, the Emperor issued an edict that girls were to marry when they reached the age of thirteen. If they were not married, their fathers and elder brothers were held responsible. If women didn’t have children, where would the nation get its soldiers? Every day we hear that America is planning to attack us and that we must liberate Taiwan. If women can’t have babies, where will the soldiers come from? And with no soldiers, who wards off the American attack and who liberates Taiwan?

Don’t bother me with those platitudes, Sister-in-law. Chairman Mao is a bit smarter than you, don’t you think? And Chairman Mao has said: We must control our population! With no organisation and no discipline, at the rate we’re going, mankind is doomed.

Mother was ready: Chairman Mao also said that more numbers means more manpower, and more manpower means more things can be achieved. People are living treasures. The world requires people. He also said: It is wrong to keep rain from falling and to keep women from raising children.

You are putting words into Chairman Mao’s mouth, Sister-in-law, Gugu said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. In olden days, you’d lose your head for falsifying an imperial edict. We’ve never said that women cannot have babies, but that they should not have too many. In other words, planned pregnancies.

How many children a woman bears in her life is controlled by fate, Mother said. Who needs your planning? To me you people are like a blind man lighting a candle, just wasting wax.

As Mother said, Gugu and the others were wasting their effort and money and creating a bad name for themselves. They began by giving free condoms to the heads of women’s associations in every village to pass out to women of childbearing age and ask their husbands to wear them. The condoms wound up in pigpens or were blown up like balloons, some even painted, for children to play with. Gugu and the others went door to door to distribute birth control pills, but met with resistance from women who complained about side effects. Even if they forced them to take pills in front of them, as soon as they left, the women would stick their fingers or chopsticks down their throats to regurgitate the pills. The resistance eventually led to a call for vasectomies.

Word quickly spread throughout the villages that Gugu and Huang Qiuya were the inventors of vasectomies. People even went so far as to say that Huang created the concept, while Gugu put it into practice.

They aren’t normal, two old maids who are green with envy whenever they see a married couple, Xiao Xiachun said assertively, which is why they came up with their plan to make every family childless. He told us that Gugu and Huang had first experimented on young male pigs, then on monkeys, and finally on ten death-row prisoners. When the experiment was called a success, the men had their sentences reduced to life imprisonment. Naturally, it didn’t take us long to discover that Xiao did not know what he was talking about.

Back then, Gugu’s voice often came to us through loudspeakers. Brigade cadres, hear this: In the spirit of the eighth meeting of the commune’s family-planning steering group, all men whose wives have borne them three or more children and any male with a total of three children are to report to the commune health centre to undergo a vasectomy. They will receive a bonus of twenty yuan to help them recuperate and will be given a week off with no deduction of work points.

Men got together to complain. Shit, they griped, you neuter a pig, you castrate a bull, and you geld horses and mules, but since when did they start cutting off a man’s balls? We’re not candidates for palace eunuchs, why go after us? But when the family-planning cadres explained to them that a vasectomy only… Well, they glared and they protested: That sounds fine now, but when you put us up on the bed and get us all numb, we doubt you’ll stop with our balls. They’ll probably cut our pricks off at the same time. Then we’ll have to squat to pee, like women.