Chinese writer Mo Yan (莫言) won the Nobel Prize in Literature yesterday, a cause of pride for a government that had disowned the only previous Chinese winner of the award, an exiled critic.
National TV broke into its newscast to announce the award — exceptional for the tightly scripted broadcast that usually focuses on the doings of Chinese leaders.
The Swedish Academy, which selects the winners of the prestigious award, praised Mo’s “hallucinatory realism” saying it “merges folk tales, history and the contemporary.”
Photo: EPA
Peter Englund, the academy’s permanent secretary, said the academy had contacted Mo, 57, before the announcement.
“He said he was overjoyed and scared,” Englund said.
State media quoted Mo as saying the win has inspired him to “strive harder” in his writing.
“On hearing the news that I won the award, I was very happy,” Mo was quoted saying by the official China News Service.
“I will focus on creating new works. I will strive harder to thank everyone,” he said.
Among the works highlighted by the Nobel judges were Red Sorghum (1993), The Garlic Ballads (1995) and Big Breasts & Wide Hips (2004).
"He’s written 11 novels and let’s say a hundred short stories,” Englund said. “If you want to start off to get a sense of how he is writing and also get a sense of the moral core in what he is writing I would recommend The Garlic Ballads.”
The award was almost certain to be welcomed in China, unlike when jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. Beijing also disowned the Nobel when Gao Xingjian (高行健) won the literature award in 2000 for his absurdist dramas and inventive fiction. Gao’s works are laced with criticisms of China’s communist government and have been banned in China.
Chinese social media exploded with pride after the announcement. Hu Xijin (胡錫進), editor-in-chief of the state-run Global Times tabloid, said on a microblog that Mo’s winning is proof that the West has looked beyond Chinese dissidents.
“This prize may prove China, with its growing strength, does not have only dissidents who can be accepted by the West. China’s mainstream cannot be kept out for long,” Hu wrote.
Born Guan Moye (管謨業) in 1955 to a farming family in Shandong Province, Mo chose his penname while writing his first novel. Garrulous by nature, Mo has said the name, meaning “don’t speak,” was intended to remind him to hold his tongue lest he get himself into trouble and to mask his identity since he began writing while serving in the army.
His breakthrough came with novel Red Sorghum published in 1987. Set in a small village, like much of his fiction, Red Sorghum is an earthy tale of love and peasant struggles set against the backdrop of the anti-Japanese war.
Additional reporting by AFP
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique