Mo Yan (L) of China, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature, smiles as he poses next to his wife Du Qinlan after receiving his prize during the Nobel Prize award ceremony at the Stockholm Concert Hall in Stockholm December 10, 2012. (Jonas Ekstromer/Reuters)
Whether or not I deserved the Nobel Prize, I already received it, and now it's time to get back to my writing desk and produce a good work. I hear that the 2013 list of Nobel Prize nominees has been finalized. I hope that once the new laureate is announced, no one will pay attention to me anymore.
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This is how 2012 Nobel laureate Mo Yan ended a recent speech at the 2nd Sino-Australian Literary Forum in Beijing, where he shared the stage with 2003 laureate J.M. Coetzee. No doubt Mo Yan is trying to end the debate on whether the Nobel selection committee had made the right decision in awarding the prize a Chinese author who does not comfortably fit the "dissident" box.
Mo Yan directly addressed a main controversy that surrounded him since his win: "Should Nobel laureates take on more social responsibility?" His answer was a firm negative:
The prize money does not come out of taxpayers' pockets, so I don't have such responsibilities. I hate partisan politics and how people gang up on opponents based on ideology. I like to come and go on my own, which allows me to look on from the sidelines with a clear mind and gain insight about the world and the human condition. I don't have the capability or interest of becoming a politician. I just want to write, quietly, and do some charity work in secret.
Mo Yan added that while it is laudable when Nobel recipients feel compelled to act in the name of the award, the decision not to do so, whatever its motivation, should not be portrayed as immoral. Mo Yan noted that he "really did not want to attend" the literary event and then went further, asking event organizers to stop inviting him, and asking fans to stop visiting the places he has lived. Chinese local media have recently reported that tourists have been taking home bits and pieces of Mo Yan's former residences.