Dylan win a surprise for many in China

The news that Bob Dylan won this year's Nobel Prize in literature came as a surprise to many Chinese, who overwhelmingly showed sympathy for Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.

The latter arguably has a much larger fan base in China and has perennially been rumored to be the next Nobel laureate for literature.

"Nobody would expect a singer to win a Nobel," said Chen Xiaoming, a Peking University professor specializing in literary criticism. He called the win "a performance piece by the jury", a euphemism for a joke. But he also said Dylan indeed represented cultural radicalism and an avant-garde spirit in the 1950s and 1960s.