Mo Yan’s (莫言) Nobel lecture did little to dispel controversy in literary circles yesterday, with China’s state media widely covering the Nobel Prize in Literature winner’s speech, while dissident artists piled on derision.
In the traditional lecture in Stockholm on Friday, Mo, the vice-chairman of the government-backed China Writers’ Association, took a swipe at his critics, saying their target “had nothing to do” with him, and urging them to read his books.
Mo has walked a tightrope during his stay in Stockholm, where he will pick up the award tomorrow, with some pundits supporting his claims that he is “independent,” and others casting him as a Beijing stooge.
In China, his lecture did little to dispel the divide.
“In the last few days, he has defended the system of censorship ... then in his lecture he talks about storytelling — to use a Chinese expression, he is like a prostitute insisting her services are clean,” dissident poet Ye Du (野渡), a member of the non-government Independent Chinese Pen Center, told reporters.
“As far as an assessment of him, in literature he has some merit, but as a living human being, he is a dwarf,” Ye said.
Ye said Chinese intellectuals had hoped Mo would use the lecture to renew his call for the Chinese government to release jailed 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), but instead he voiced support for China’s system of state censorship.
China’s state media covered Mo’s lecture widely, focusing on how he grew up in rural China with an illiterate mother and detailing the inspiration behind novels such as Red Sorghum, Frog and Life and Death are Wearing Me Out.
His victory has brought Chinese literature into the world spotlight and will help bridge the gap between Chinese culture and the rest of the world, Xinhua news agency cited Lan Lijun (蘭立俊), Chinese ambassador to Sweden, as saying.
“This is the first time that a non-dissident Chinese has won a Nobel prize, so it is not Mo Yan’s fault that the state media is praising him,” a Beijing intellectual, who only wanted to be identified by her surname, Wang, told reporters.
“It is clear he is against censorship, but he lives in China and he has the freedom to choose not to take on the views of a dissident,” she said.
Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) condemned the lecture in a tweet, saying: “Mo Yan’s talk about storytelling is about covering things up and hiding, it was powerless, disgraceful, a betrayal and a sellout.”
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to