ABSTRACT
Mo Yan's short story Lingyao, published in 1993, was inspired on some level by Lu Xun's Yao, the brilliant, trailblazing work of early modem Chinese fiction penned in 1919. Both stories involve a father attempting to perform an act of filial piety by means of a miraculous cure based on the belief that there is no more efficacious medicine than remedies obtained from the human body while it is still functioning. This chapter talks about that the biblical notion of sacrifice as inspired by Jesus Christ was consciously employed by Lu Xun in Yao, but only mockingly suggested in Mo Yan's Lingyao as a result of the latter's satiric re-creation of the earlier story. There is a traditional belief that “the gall of notorious criminals, who have been executed, has a great efficacy as a tonic,” the idea being that such individuals have expanded galls resulting from their audacity.
