Product Description

A Chinese writer whose marriage has fallen apart travels to Tibet. As he wanders through the countryside, he witnesses the sky burial of a Tibetan woman who died during childbirth, shares a tent with a nomad who is walking to a sacred mountain to seek forgiveness for sleeping with his daughter, meets a silversmith who has hung the wind-dried corpse of his lover to the walls of his cave, and hears the story of a young female incarnate lama who died during a Buddhist initiation rite. In the thin air of the high plateau, the divide between fact and fiction becomes confused and the man is drawn deep into an alien culture he knew nothing about, and which haunts his dreams. Famously banned in China in 1987, "Stick Out Your Tongue", is the book that set Ma Jian on the road to exile, and still makes it difficult for him to publish his work in China today. Written shortly after the journey to Tibet he describes so vividly in his prize-winnning travel memoir "Red Dust", it is an extraordinary collection of stories about an extraordinary place - a picture of Tibet that is both enchanting and horrifying, violent and beautiful, perverse and seductive. Ma Jian has written a new afterword for the book that explains it's title (it is what a doctor says to an ill patient when looking for a diagnosis) how it came to be written and something about the complex relationship between China and Tibet. This is the first publication in English of an important work of Chinese literature that has had a huge influence on other writers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #165620 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

Good Book Guide
Both horrific and beautiful

From the Publisher
A glittering collection of short stories set in Tibet from one of China's foremost writers - banned in China for its language, sexuality and picture of Tibet.

About the Author
Ma Jian left Beijing for Hong Kong in 1987. After the hand-over of Hong Kong he moved to Germany and then London, where he now lives. His acclaimed book Red Dust won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award in 2002. In 2004 Chatto published his novel, The Noodle Maker.

Customer Reviews

Dark and Kafkaesque...albeit too brief!
'Stick Out Your Tongue' is a welcome and thoroughly enjoyable new edition to the list of Ma Jian's books which have been translated into English. A collection of short stories relating to the author's travels in Tibet, the book could easily be read as a continuation of 'Red Dust'. At the same time the often bizarre events which Ma Jian recounts and the dark humour which permeates his writing is very familiar to anyone who has read 'The Noodle Maker'.

From the very first short story, 'Stick Out Your Tongue' attempts to grapple with the disturbing events which Ma Jian encountered during his time in Tibet. The reader is exposed to sky burials, affairs, the harshness of the plateaux, folklore, and the nastier rituals of Tibetan Buddhism. Through this mixture of fiction and fact, fantasy and reality, Ma Jian creates an image of Tibet that shatters the manufactured Western notion of a land of purity, peace and tranquillity. In short, Ma Jian evokes in the reader a sense that Tibetans possess no less humanity - and all the negative qualities associated with it - than any other nation.

In the afterword to this short (90 page) volume, Ma Jian provides us with an extremely interesting insight into the furore which the publication and subsequent banning of 'Stick Out Your Tongue' created in the People's Republic of China in 1987. The work was banned due to its shedding too a harsh light on the everyday life of socialist Tibet. The light that Ma Jian casts is indeed anything but positive, but this is not a critique of socialism, or of Chinese rule in Tibet. All of the stories deal exclusively with Tibetans, their traditions, culture, and religion as seen through the eyes of a Han Chinese. One thing that can be said for sure after reading Ma Jian's stories is that socialism is only conspicuous by its absence.

For anyone looking for a short introduction to Ma Jian's work, this book serves as an excellent and accessible read. Alternatively, if 'Red Dust' or 'The Noodle Maker' hit the right spot, 'Stick Out Your Tongue' will only do the same. This book is a great volume from one of modern China's most influential and exciting authors.

Unique perspective of life
In this book, Ma Jian wanted to show the readers that "Tibetans can be as corrupt and brutal as the rest of us. To idealise them is to deny them their humanity" -- thus his stories of sky burial, atonement of incest, brutal religious rite etc in this book banned in China.

Further in his epilogue, Ma Jian held the view that Tibet's separation from China is inevitable -- I could not see any logic of his assumption. He is without doubt good at his avant-garde literacy style of showing the dark extremity of human nature and culture, with his ever self-conflicting perspectives of life. An anti-materialist as well as an anti-idealist. An unique observer and critic of life itself.

5 stars for his talented writing less 2 stars for his unfounded political view.