Another First for China

By Tang Yuankai

Another First for China

By Tang Yuankai

A look at the man who nabbed the world’s top literature prize

C hinese w riter Mo Yan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on October 11. Before the announcement was made, his novels had already sold out at bookstores across China.

“About 5,000 copies of one of M o’s novels have sold out,” said Tang Zhengyu,Director of the Marketing Department at the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing Group.

Buying M o’s novels online isn’t easy either because many of his works have also sold out on the leading Chinese e-commerce websites.

On learning from the bookmaker Unibet that he was likely to w in the Nobel Prize, Mo returned to his hometown, Gaom i County in east China’s Shandong Province, to stay w ith his father and out of sight from the media. He heard the news on TV.

“W inning the Nobel Prize means that I would have to meet many journalists in the following days,” Mo said. “Undoubtedly, the Nobel Prize in literature is the world’s highest award in the field. However, in history, many great w riters never had the chance to win the prize, such as Leo Tolstoy and Franz Kafka, while not all the w inners of the prize deserve the title.”

M o’s w in has elicited a variety of responses from w riters and literary critics.

“In the past, the Nobel Prize in literature was mostly awarded to European w riters.The Chinese have always w ished that the judges would pay more attention to Chinese w riters,” said Wu Di, Director of the Institute of Comparative and W orld Literature at Zhejiang University.

“It’s surprising that the Nobel Prize for literature is awarded to a Chinese. It indicates that Chinese literature has grabbed worldw ide recognition. From now on we don’t need to care much about w inning the Nobel Prize but can focus more on our w riting,” said Zhang Yiwu, a professor at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University.

Editor in Chief ofLifeweekZhu Wei said on his m icro-blog that the Swedish Academy has recognized Mo’s in-depth analysis of the Chinese way of life.

“Mo’s w inning has aroused the Chinese people’s love for reading. People can get immersed in reading books again like they did in the late 1970s and early 1980s,” said Sun Yuemu,Director ofChina Book Business Report.

Lo st in transla tion

Before w inning the Nobel Prize, M o had already w on a number of international awards. In January 2005, he won the 30th International NONINO Prize. His works have been praised for their roots in ancient Chinese civilization, their rich imagination and unique w riting technique.

However, for a long time, Mo and many other Chinese w riters failed to get the recognition they deserved because much of the meaning of their works was lost in translation.A review published on the Singapore-basedLianhe Zaobaoon October 9 said that the Chinese don’t need to attach much value to the Nobel Prize for Literature which only evaluates literary works in alphabetic languages,because the alphabetic languages cannot present the depth and richness of Chinese works.

Therefore, Mo’s w in could largely be attributed to his translators. Anna Gustafsson Chen,the Swedish translator of many modern Chinese literary works, had translated three of Mo’s books published in Sweden this year. Howard Goldblatt, a master in translating contemporary Chinese literary works, has also introduced Mo’s works to the English-speaking world by translating a dozen of his works. “I love all of Mo’s novels and enjoy translating them,” Goldblatt said. Noël Dutrait won the Laure Bataillin Award together with Mo and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres medal for translatingThe Republic of Wineinto French in 2001.

“Chinese literary works cannot have an impact on the world w ithout being translated into foreign languages by great translators,” said Tan Wuchang, Director of the Contem porary Chinese Poem Research Center at Beijing Normal University.

The influence of foreign w riters is another key to Mo’s success.

A fter China’s reform and opening up,Western literature was introduced to China,which Mo devoured. His work is said to bear a strong resemblance to the 1982 Nobel Prize w inner Gabriel García Márquez. The Nobel Comm ittee in Sweden praised Mo’s “hallucinatory realism,” which blends aspects of “folk tales, history and the contemporary,” and said that his works reminded people of Márquez’s and W illiam Faulkner’s works.

Mo said that if he had read Márquez’sCien años de soledad(orOne Hundred Years of Solitude) beforehand, he might have adopted a different writing approach toRed Sorghum.

Film ad ap ta tion

In 1988, Chinese fi lm director Zhang Yimou turned Mo’s 1987 novelRed Sorghuminto a movie, which won the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival and brought both of them fame.

Set in the 1930s against the backdrop of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression,Red Sorghumis a tale of love and peasant struggles. The main characters dubbed“my grandpa” and “my grandma” organize the villagers to combat the Japanese w ith the simplest of weapons. The passion and vitality exuded by these characters attracted Zhang and he decided to turn the novel into a fi lm.

The film turned out to be a success, and sales of the novel shot up.Red Sorghumis praised for its unconstrained imagination and smooth flow of language. It praises the power of life and upholds the nationalistic spirit, and provides a fresh look to contemporary war novels.

‘Don’t sp eak’

Mo first captured the attention of the literary world w ith his novellaTransparent Red Radishpublished in 1985. The “red radish” is symbolic of both sex and food, and hunger inspired Mo to w rite. As a kid, he knew he wanted to be a w riter because a w riter could eat three meals of dumplings a day, he was told. As a child,Mo suffered through the 1960s’ famine, during which time the village children ate whatever they could get their hands on, including tree leaves, insects, mud and coal.

Red Sorghumexpresses his thoughts on history and love, andThe Republic of Wineembodies his regrets for the degeneration of mankind and his hatred for corrupt officials.Although the novels are quite different in content, they both reflect a hungry child’s longing for a good life.

Mo was born in the 1950s in a small village in Gaom i, a county w ith a history of more than 2,200 years and well known for its traditional folk arts and its production of many celebrities. Often returning home to w rite, Mo sets most of his novels in his home village.

ADMIRING MO’S BOOKS: A reader looks into a disp lay case of Mo’s books in Wang fu jing Bookstore in Beijing on Oc tober 14

M o dropped out of school during the“cultural revolution” (1966-76) and worked on a farm, where the cows became his friends.“I understood more about cows than human beings. I knew what they were thinking.”

During that time he developed the habit of talking to himself. His mother thought he was mentally ill when one day she found he was mumbling in front of a tree. W ith his garrulousness causing his family much trouble, his mother begged him to stop talking in public.That is w hy he gave him self the pseudonym “Mo Yan,” meaning “don’t speak” in Chinese, when he began w riting.

A w rite r’s g ift

“W riting is another way of speaking. I w rite because I want to share my ideas and thoughts w ith my friends by telling stories.In the process of w riting, I have known more about myself and human nature,” Mo said.

W riting also enables Mo to do what he dares not do in real life. He is brave in revealing and criticizing the dark side of society in his works, which has angered some people.

But in daily life, he is careful and considerate, often fearing of upsetting others.“My daughter lives near the Beijing Capital Airport. Every time I come to Beijing, I won’t head straight to her home after I get off the plane. Instead, I always ask the taxi driver to take me to the city center for fear of annoying him by traveling such a short distance. Maybe the more cowardly a w riter is in real life,the more brave he is in his works,” Mo said.“Literature enables us to do what we dare not do and cannot do in reality.”

“In my earlier w ritings, I w rote about m iseries infl icted by the outside world, focusing more on the evils of society. Now I pay more attention to the evils hidden deep in my heart.”