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Mo Yan of China wins Nobel Literature Prize
by Staff Writers
Stockholm (AFP) Oct 11, 2012

China netizens applaud Mo Yan's Nobel prize
Beijing (AFP) Oct 11, 2012 - Millions of China's microblog users broadly welcomed Thursday's award of the Nobel Literature Prize to Mo Yan, with many claiming an achievement for the country's literature.

The award was the most discussed topic on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, with almost three million users posting messages about the writer within two hours of the news being announced on state media.

"Mo Yan winning is his personal honour, but also the honour of Chinese literature," wrote one.

"For Mo Yan to win the Nobel prize is the greatest thing for so many Chinese people. It really is a dream," said another.

Mo Yan, 57, one of the country's leading writers of the past half-century, became the first Chinese national and just the second Chinese-language writer to win the literature prize.

"Congratulations Mo Yan. A Chinese person has won. There were tears in my eyes," said one user.

While the majority of posts on Weibo were congratulatory, some netizens displayed indifference.

One said the author impressed the judges because his writing style appeals to Westerners. "But to read his books, I do not think they capture the style of the Chinese people."

Other microblog users said the author would be able to exploit commercial opportunities following his triumph.

"Mo Yan has achieved overnight fame. My roommate tomorrow will go to the library to get a Mo Yan book. I doubt she will find one," said one user.

"His books are about to outsell Steve Jobs' biography," added another.


Mo Yan, one of China's leading writers of the past half-century, on Thursday won the Nobel Literature Prize for his writing that mixes folk tales, history and the contemporary, the Swedish Academy announced.

At 57 he became the first Chinese national to win the prize, and the initial official reaction indicated it would be held up as a victory for China, in sharp contrast to Beijing's angry response to the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for dissident Liu Xiaobo.

Chinese-born writer, political dissident and exile Gao Xingian, who received French citizenship in 1997, won the Nobel Literature Prize in 2000 but it was ignored by the Chinese press at the time.

Mo Yan's works explore the brutality and darkness of 20th-century Chinese society with a cynical wit.

He is perhaps best-known abroad for his 1987 novella "Red Sorghum", a tale of the violence that plagued the eastern China countryside -- where he grew up -- during the 1920s and 30s.

The story was later made into an acclaimed film by leading Chinese director Zhang Yimou.

"Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition," the Swedish Academy said.

"Winning the Nobel prize has stunned me, as I always thought it was very distant for me," Mo Yan said in a recorded interview posted on the Nobel prize website.

"On hearing the news that I won the award, I was very happy," he was quoted as saying by the official China News Service.

"I will focus on creating new works. I will strive harder to thank everyone."

AFP could not immediately reach Mo Yan, whose mobile phone was switched off.

State media said he was at his home in rural Shandong province, where many of his works are set.

The Nobel prize is often dismissed in China as Western-focused, but users of the country's hugely popular microblogging services broadly welcomed the win as a triumph for Chinese literature.

It was the most discussed topic on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, with almost three million web-users posting messages within two hours of the announcement.

The Swedish Academy hailed Mo Yan, a pseudonym that means "Don't speak", and whose real name is Guan Moye, for a body of work which, "with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary."

The Academy's permanent secretary, Peter Englund, said the Academy had spoken to Mo Yan by telephone and quoted him as saying he was "overjoyed and terrified" at being given the prize.

Englund said his use of satire was important to be able to enjoy the dark sides in his work, describing it as both crude and sensual.

"There are things (in his books) that are among the most frightening things I have read," Englund told Sweden's Aftonbladet TV.

Mo Yan has published novels, short stories and essays on various topics, and despite his social criticism is seen in his homeland as one of the foremost contemporary authors, the Nobel committee noted.

His acclaimed works also include "Big Breasts and Wide Hips", "Republic of Wine" and "Life and Death are Wearing Me Out".

His work generally looks back at China's tumultuous 20th century in tales often infused with politics and a dark, cynical sense of humour.

The backdrops for his various works have included the 1911 revolution that toppled China's last imperial dynasty, Japan's brutal wartime invasion, newly Communist China's failed land-reform policies of the 1950s and the madness of Mao Zedong's 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

His latest novel, 2009's "Frog", is considered his most daring yet, due to its searing depiction of China's "one child" population control policy and the local officials who ruthlessly implement it with forced abortions and sterilisations.

Despite such content, Mo Yan has so far deftly managed to avoid running into serious trouble with Communist authorities, aided by his position as vice chairman of the state-sanctioned Chinese Writers Association.

"We are very happy. This is a happy thing for the China literary world," He Jianming, another vice chairman of the association, said on Thursday after the prize was announced.

Mo Yan has also supported official policies stating that art and literature must serve the socialist cause -- and, by extension, not threaten Communist Party rule.

The author grew up in Gaomi in Shandong province in northeastern China, the son of farmers.

As a 12-year-old during the Cultural Revolution he left school to work, first in agriculture, later in a factory and in 1976 he joined the People's Liberation Army and began to study literature and write.

His first short story was published in a literary journal in 1981.

The Nobels for medicine, physics and chemistry were announced earlier this week.

The peace prize will be announced on Friday, with the field of possible winners wide open, followed by the economics prize on Monday, wrapping up the Nobel season.

As tradition dictates, the laureates will receive their prizes at ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of prize creator Alfred Nobel in 1896.

Because of the economic crisis, the Nobel Foundation has slashed the prize sum to eight million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million, 930,000 euros) per award, down from the 10 million kronor awarded since2001.

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China dissident criticizes literature Nobel
Washington (AFP) Oct 11, 2012 - Prominent Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng on Thursday criticized the awarding of the Nobel literature prize to officially tolerated author Mo Yan, saying the move was meant to please Beijing.

Wei, often considered the father of China's modern democracy movement, praised Mo Yan's skill as a writer but questioned his actions including copying by hand part of a speech by late leader Mao Zedong for a commemorative book.

Saying that China also had other talented writers, Wei charged that the Nobel committee chose Mo Yan because his selection would be "more tolerated by the communist regime."

"Thus this award is not really based on true skill in literature but a reflection of the will of big business," Wei, who lives in exile in Washington, told AFP.

"Just look at the elated hype on the Nobel prize by the Chinese government before and after the announcement. We could tell that this prize was awarded for the purpose of pleasing the communist regime and is thus not noteworthy," he said.

In announcing the first Nobel literature prize to a Chinese national, the Swedish Academy said that it was honoring Mo Yan for using "fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives" to create worlds reminiscent of William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

The award won wide praise in China's state-controlled media, which two years earlier imposed a blackout after the Nobel committee in Norway awarded the prestigious peace prize to dissident writer Liu Xiaobo.

Unlike Mo Yan, Liu has run afoul of the Chinese system. Authorities arrested Liu in 2008 and sentenced him to 11 years in jail on Christmas Day 2009 after he authored a pro-democracy manifesto known as Charter 08.

Wei, who has been tipped in the past for the Nobel Peace Prize and has criticized Liu as too accommodating, is a former electrician who boldly put up a poster urging democracy and signed his name to it after Mao's death in 1976.

Wei spent 18 years in prison, partially on death row, until he was allowed to go into exile in 1997 after intervention by then US president Bill Clinton.

Another US-based dissident, Chai Ling, said she was hopeful after the Nobel literature prize, noting that state media embraced Mo Yan even though his latest novel "Frog" depicted China's one-child policy and the local officials who ruthlessly implement it with forced abortions and sterilizations.

"I hope that Mo Yan's thoughtful criticism of the one-child policy will help others see its role in causing gendercide," she said in a statement.

Chai Ling, a leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square revolt, is the founder of the advocacy group All Girls Allowed, which fights against gender-selective abortions under the one-child policy by parents who do not want girls.



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