Customer Reviews

Stick Out Your Tongue: Stories

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Ma Jian's "Stick Out Your Tongue" is a collection of short stories that center around a couple central themes; the harshness of life in rural Tibet, and often times "non-traditional" sexual practices. I doubt the stories in the book are meant to be at all expository, or shed much real knowledge about what life is like for real Tibetans, but it does provide a picture of Tibet that is very alive, and very hostile. I'm still not certain what the original intent of the work was. In some ways it merely seems to offer another stereotype of Tibetan society (an anti-romanticized one), and in other ways it seems simply like an attempt to bring the reader into a world that is just surreal, with Tibet being presented simply as a vehicle for that vision.

The Afterword confused me as well. In it, Ma Jian briefly outlines the controversy surrounding the work, and also comments on his sadness in regard to the plight of Tibetans as outsiders in their own homeland. The last commentary is the most confusing, since it seems to suggest that this is somehow tied into the work. In actuality it is quite absent. There are no politics in this work, unless you draw the conclusion that the darker side that you witness in the book is there due to Chinese influence. This is a loose connection however, since there are no cues that point in that direction. Only the narrator is Han Chinese, and is mostly a peripheral character. The stories themselves center wholly on Tibetans engaging in relationships with other Tibetans.

I think some other reviewers had it spot-on when they said these stories do more to humanize Tibetans than anything else. The idea that a monk would have to hire a guard to keep lusty monks away from his wife, or that a Tibetan would beat his cheating wife and steal the monestery's gold won't find much place in most Western visions of Tibet. Those are typically the actions of Chinese intruders, with Tibetans almost always playing the role of passive, saintly protagonist.

English translation, a very short book (<100 pg) with only 5 short stories, it has some most queer stories you do not expected from Tibet (quoted: stories with multi-generational incest, sexual abuse and ritual rape). And no wonder it is censored by the Chinese government (because it is queer and it is about Tibet). Feel really bad about Chinese censorship, and sooner or later China will have an army of ignorant people... (and yes, who give a damn about Tibet people's suffering and their want of independency, right? No we don't, because we don't even know who the hell Tibet people are.)

After "Red Dust," immediately I read this. I found that the section "The Woman and the Blue Sky" shows up nearly verbatim, if with subtle shifts of emphasis or description, as the first story with the same title in this short collection of five disturbing, detached tales from Tibet, "Stick Out Your Tongue." (The title refers to the natives' traditional greeting!)

His afterword to that follow-up to "Red Dust" (also reviewed by me) in this 1998 edition (written in 1987, in English 2006 also via another seamless translation far as I can tell by Flora Drew) admits this small volume of stories roused tremendous controversy in China. It can be existential and it can be hopeful, in the Beat spirit. The religious temperament pervades as God and man, myth and legend tangle: in an eerie tale of initiation, the narrator confides: "I am writing down this story in the hope that I can start to forget it." (66) Revelation does not descend for Ma Jian either in his travelogue or his storytelling from Tibet. Monks live amidst Maoist slogans; Ma Jian himself gains pocket money by "painting propaganda murals outside the local radio station." (86) He does not comment on this apparent irony.

Graphic as these spare stories can be, if for me rather than the PRC censors they seemed far from "pornographic," a demystified and deromanticized version of life on the plateau. They may benefit from a prior reading of "Red Dust," at least the Tibetan chapter; without some grounding in dharma Tibetan-style, the concentrated allusions and contexts may elude readers.

"Stick" dismantles the natives as "gentle, godly people untainted by base desires and greed." Ma Jian notes that "in my experience, Tibetans can be as corrupt and brutal as the rest of us. To idealise them is to deny them their humanity." (92)

Certainly, in "Red Dust" and "Stick Out Your Tongue," the steady, direct account of a very young woman, dying after a botched childbirth, in her sky burial--when a corpse is left for the vultures after the bones have been pounded down and mixed with dough to be fed to birds, and after the skin has been separated and the viscera and flesh dismembered after blessings have been recited--seems determined to get rid of any lingering attachment to delicacy. I found Ma Jian's account, reading it twice echoed in two versions, sensitive and dignified, although other readers were predictably revolted. For a sympathetic explanation in a book that I reviewed, compare Colin Thubron's trek around sacred Mount Kailash, "To a Mountain in Tibet (2011)."

Ma Jian doubts, even as a budding Buddhist, that his faith or that of his fellow adherents can save Tibet. Communists import greed: "As soon as a road is built, kindness vanishes." Values of one collective, perhaps communal and somewhat refined, civilization cannot withstand those of individualism masked as communism. As he says in "Red Dust": "I came here hoping to see man saved by the Buddha's compassion, but in Tibet the Buddha cannot even save himself." (297) Ma Jian winds up distrusting Buddhism, and dismissing capitalism as well as Communism. No wonder that he left for Hong Kong the year he wrote these stories, fearing prison. He moved to Germany and he now lives in London.

He sees a pert woman's bosom jiggling as she shakes on a bus ride, with a "bent paper clip" holding her shirt in place instead of a button. This image reappears in "Stick," as does a character Sonam, in "Red Dust" half-Chinese, half-Tibetan and torn in loyalty; a skull-bowl's vividly imagined origins inspire another bold story; a third ends with a forlorn, supplicating young woman exposing her breast from under a market table, a scene first seen in "Red Dust." The oddness inherent to the fiction and the fact combines into an afterword on Tibet's uncertain future, and that of Ma Jian and his homeland from which, for such candor, he has had to flee.

Ma Jian traveled to Tibet to escape the Chinese authorities who were attempting to apprehend him based on some rather blunt writings he published (you can read a snippet of his travel at the end of this collection).

The book contains 5 short stories ~ when I say short, I mean short! The entire book covers about 70 pages. But what the stories lack in length, they make up for in content.

As many reviewers have stated: this is not the censored, idealistic picture of Tibet that Westerners imagine. Like any country, Tibet has its share of problems (beyond the oppression and censorship of China). What the reader sees here is the human side of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism.

A warning: these stories are not for the faint of heart. There are tales of incest, rape, beatings, dismemberment, and more. Approach with caution if you have a weak stomach for reality. But if you are in search of a book touching on the Tibet that Westerners rarely see, then you must read this. Again, take with a grain of salt; as I am sure that not everyone in Tibet is engaged in rape and incest. This book has been banned in China ~ be happy we live in a country where we have access to uncensored literature!

The first story focuses on a Buddhist death ritual and is very blunt and graphically depicted, though beautiful in a surreal way. The second is about a young man on the vast plains and his dream. Another focuses on the story of a monk and his wife from 400 years before as told by another monk (who claimed to be the man the wife had an affair with); queue adultery and the wrath of the heavens. Another story involved a case of incest and a long lost child of the incest. Finally the stories concluded with the tale of a chosen 'living Buddha' who undergoes harsh training and rituals only to meet death in an icy river.

As I said, very good works but very eye opening! I recommend reading at once!

The stories are rich in tastes of the rawness of a world very foreign to ours. My difficulty with this book is the strong undercurrent of incest. One or two stories with this theme would have been plenty to make the point, even if incest is that predominent there.

These short stories are so beautifully written that the dark subject matter is breathtaking. A little peek into a way of life that is so unlike life in America. I have recommended this book to several people. It is definitely worth reading again and again.