Mo Yan was born in 1955, in GaomiCounty inShandongprovince to a family of farmers. Mo was 11 years old when theCultural Revolutionwas launched, at which time he left school to work as a farmer. At the age of 18, he began to work at a cotton factory. During Mo's teenage years, with a series of political campaigns from theGreat Leap Forwardto theCultural Revolutiongoing on, his access to literature was limited to novels in thesocialist realiststyle under Mao Zedong, which centered largely on the themes of class struggle and conflict. At the close of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, Mo joined in the People's Liberation Army(PLA), and began writing while he was still a soldier. He began his career as a writer in thereform and opening upperiod, publishing dozens of short stories and novels in Chinese. His first novel was Falling Rain on a Spring Night, published in 1981. In 1984, he received a literary award from the PLA Magazine, and at the same year he began attending the Military Art Academy, where he first adopted the pen name of Mo Yan. He published his firstnovella , A Transparent Radish in 1984, and released Red Sorghum in 1986, launching his career as a nationally recognized novelist. In 1991, he obtained a master's degree in Literature from Beijing Normal University. "Mo Yan" -- meaning "don't speak" in Chinese -- is his pen name. In an interview, he explained the name came from a warning from his father and mother not to speak his mind while outside, because of China's revolutionary political situation from the 1950s, when he grew up.  Mo Yan's Red Sorghum Clan is about the generations of a Shandong family between 1923 and 1976. The author deals with great changes in Chinese history such as the War of Resistance Against Japanese Invasion, theCommunist Revolution, and theCultural Revolution, but in an unusual way, for example from the point of view of the invading Japanese soldiers. His second novel, The Garlic Ballads, is based on a true story of the farmers of Gaomi Township fighting against a government that would not buy its crops. What can we infer from the passage about the Cultural Revolution?
The Culture Revolution lasted for 10 years. People were not allowed to speak outside during that time. People had no access to foreign literature during that time. It happened at the same time as the Great Leap Forward.