Chicken soup for Chinese writers' soul

The life of a Chinese writer can be lonely, difficult and frustrating. For the few who have made it, their success is often dissected for clues to encourage the rest to continue their struggle to live their dreams.

In the tumultuous Chinese literary universe fraught with ideological conflicts and a wealth of long but trashy reads, Mo Yan, the winner of this year's Nobel Prize in literature, has shown masterful skill in turning every challenge into opportunity while portraying Chinese rural life with sensuous language and biting satire. Although there may be many things about Mo that a writer can draw inspiration from, I believe the following three are the most valuable.

First, Mo's success pivots on his abilities to persevere and bear loneliness in pursuing his love for literature. A leading traditional writer dedicated to a more serious approach to writing, he's aware of the overwhelming presence of entertainment-oriented literature, which is supported by 20 million online contributors with 227 million followers. Over the years it has expanded into a dazzling array of light genres, including mystery, ghost stories, fairy tales, time travel and romance.

As fewer people read serious literature, a rather desolate and lonely writing realm, Mo says it will eventually only be enjoyed by a small group of readers and cease to be part of mass culture. However, he has been a hardworking, prolific and serious writer who sticks to the literary tradition both on substance and style. He is one of several noted Chinese writers who still prefer writing by hand rather than on the computer, because he feels painful searching for words with hanyu pinyin input on the computer. For him, inspiration comes with the use of pen and paper.

Second, Mo has shown all Chinese writers, traditional and online, that it pays to take calculated risks. "Mo's contribution to Chinese literature is that he has always been exploring ways to narrate past and contemporary China and he has never been an escapist when confronted with the real world," said Zhou Limin, a literary commentator, adding that a lack of concern for the present is a common weak spot of many current Chinese works.

But critical and punishing as he is while scrutinizing China's real conditions, Mo has also managed to win acceptance from different camps. He was one of 100 writers and artists who transcribed by hand paragraphs from a 1942 speech by Mao Zedong that set the direction of China's literature and art for many years to come, although he admitted later that he had been trying to break out of some of Mao's confines in his work.

Third, Mo has taken his novels to the world as he transcends ideological and national boundaries, even if he gives his work a Chinese rural setting. While influenced by the social realism of famous Chinese writer and critic Lu Xun, Mo "has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel Garca Mrquez," in the words of the citation of the Swedish Academy.

Mo says his work has always emphasized people and human nature, as he treats people equally no matter whether they are perceived as good or bad. Some of Mo's novels are spiced up with plots involving foreign characters, which may be a little too fanciful and intriguing for home consumption, but his work has been widely translated and is readily available in the West.

Perhaps we should learn a little from Mo's dedication, sophistication and "hallucinatory realism" in these times of challenges and opportunities.

The writer is editor-at-large of China Daily. Email: dr.baiping@gmail.com.

(China Daily 10/20/2012 page5)