Eyes of the world on Chinese literature

Compared with the readership for popular magazines and the huge number of people who surf the Internet, the readership for serious literature has been declining over the past few decades, and sales of literature magazines and novels have continued to drop. Little wonder that many Chinese people did not know who Mo Yan was when it was announced he had won the Nobel Prize.

This is because serious literature has less appeal to the majority of people. Despite publishers rushing to print Mo’s novels, many readers will not delve into what is deep inside the stories. It is quite likely that many will not be absorbed in Mo’s works, as they are not easy reads and require some effort on the part of the reader.

And claiming that his winning the prize means Chinese literature has gained recognition from the rest of the world – the Western world in particular – is ridiculous.

We can be proud of Mo, but there is no need for us to consider the Nobel Prize as the sole benchmark for good literature. This is because Chinese literature has its own traditions, and in some ways Chinese people see the world differently from their Western counterparts. Also, the Chinese language has its own unique characteristics. How to translate Chinese novels into a foreign language without losing their essence and literary style is still a hard nut to crack. Cultural and language barriers have prevented readers in the West from really appreciating Chinese literature, and that will continue to be the case.

Mo’s winning of the prize is by no means a sign that these barriers have been fully overcome, although it should serve as a reminder to Western literary critics that Chinese literature is worth some attention.

Compared with Chinese people’s knowledge about Western literature, Western people’s acquaintance with Chinese literature and culture at large is quite limited. Despite China’s status as the world’s second-largest economy, the cultural deficit this country suffers in cultural exchanges with its Western counterparts will continue for years to come. 

Hopefully, Mo’s winning of the Nobel Prize will usher in an era of efforts both inside and outside the country to reduce that deficit. But that still primarily depends on how hard Chinese writers work to gain an insight into the society they live in, and present it in a way that can be universally accepted.

The role serious literature plays in people’s lives has given way to popular culture characterised by the Internet. However, ironically, this has provided novelists with an environment where they can create works that would otherwise never be published. At the same time, the country’s increasingly pluralistic society has made it possible for novelists to look at the world around them from perspectives they could never imagine before.

Drastic and dramatic changes have transformed the country over the past three decades, and the complex and sophisticated changes in people’s lives, both materialistically and spiritually, are definitely a mother lode of inspiration that novelists can mine.

A Chinese writer winning the Nobel Prize in literature does not necessarily signify the greatness of this country’s literature, but the country does have great writers and it has the conditions to produce many great novels.