莫言獲獎演講英文版

　　mother contracted a serious lung disease when i was still in my teens. hunger, disease, and too much work made things extremely hard on our family. the road ahead looked especially bleak, and i had a bad feeling about the future, worried that mother might take her own life. every day, the first thing i did when i walked in the door after a day of hard labor was call out for mother. hearing her voice was like giving my heart a new lease on life. but not hearing her threw me into a panic. i'd go looking for her in the side building and in the mill. one day, after searching everywhere and not finding her, i sat down in the yard and cried like a baby. that is how she found me when she walked into the yard carrying a bundle of firewood on her back. she was very unhappy with me, but i could not tell her what i was afraid of. she knew anyway. "son," she said, "don't worry, there may be no joy in my life, but i won't leave you till the god of the underworld calls me."

　　i was born ugly. villagers often laughed in my face, and school bullies sometimes beat me up because of it. i'd run home crying, where my mother would say, "you're not ugly, son. you've got a nose and two eyes, and there's nothing wrong with your arms and legs, so how could you be ugly? if you have a good heart and always do the right thing, what is considered ugly becomes beautiful." later on, when i moved to the city, there were educated people who laughed at me behind my back, some even to my face; but when i recalled what mother had said, i just calmly offered my apologies.

　　my illiterate mother held people who could read in high regard. we were so poor we often did not know where our next meal was coming from, yet she never denied my request to buy a book or something to write with. by nature hard working, she had no use for lazy children, yet i could skip my chores as long as i had my nose in a book.

　　a storyteller once came to the marketplace, and i sneaked off to listen to him. she was unhappy with me for forgetting my chores. but that night, while she was stitching padded clothes for us under the weak light of a kerosene lamp, i couldn't keep from retelling stories i'd heard that day. she listened impatiently at first, since in her eyes professional storytellers were smooth-talking men in a dubious profession. nothing good ever came out of their mouths. but slowly she was dragged into my retold stories, and from that day on, she never gave me chores on market day, unspoken permission to go to the marketplace and listen to new stories. as repayment for mother's kindness and a way to demonstrate my memory, i'd retell the stories for her in vivid detail. it did not take long to find retelling someone else's stories unsatisfying, so i began embellishing my narration. i'd say things i knew would please mother, even changed the ending once in a while. and she wasn't the only member of my audience, which later included my older sisters, my aunts, even my maternal grandmother. sometimes, after my mother had listened to one of my stories, she'd ask in a care-laden voice, almost as if to herself: "what will you be like when you grow up, son? might you wind up prattling for a living one day?"