Chinese novelist Mo Yan was awarded the first Newman Prize for Chinese Literature in the Sandy Lightwell Gallery at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art on the University of Oklahoma campus the night of March 6.

"A little over 20 years ago, in Chinese language summer school at Middlebury, I was very fortunate to have a wonderful teacher named Jian Mo Shi, Gregory Jian, who passed away a number of years ago," Peter Gries, Harold J. and Ruth Newman Chair in U.S.-China Issues director and associate professor, said.

"But I remember him teaching our third-year class and in particular I remember the short story selection of Lu Xun who many people is the foremost twentieth-century novelist (from China)."

"It was his preface to his collection of short stories called 'Na Han,' translated as 'A Call to Arms,' that had a story that really struck me and has later to this day. He was trying in the preface to 'Na Han' to explain his ambivalence about writing as an endeavor. He had initially thought that the best way he could serve his country was through medicine and he went to Japan to study medicine in a Japanese medical school that was practicing and teaching medicine in the Western mode, but he eventually became disillusioned with the possibilities of making a difference for the future of China through medicine. He thought that there were fundamental issues of culture that needed to be improved if China was to successfully endure in a very competitive world of nations ... To describe his decision to turn to literature, the way he wrestled with the decision whether or not to write, he used the wonderful metaphor of this iron house, which lingers with me to this day."

Lu Xun's vivid description of his dilemma essentially compared China to a group of people asleep in a windowless iron house inside which, even though a fire had started, the people continued to sleep passively. Lu Xun questioned whether he should yell at the house's occupants from outside without much hope of waking anyone up or saving them and possibly making the situation worse as some might wake up only to die in agony, or whether he should remain silent, saving no one but allowing the occupants of the house to suffocate peacefully in their sleep.

Lu Xun eventually decided for the sake of China's future to do the former, Gries said, although, in a trait shared by many, he retained a pessimism about his ability to change underlying cultural attitudes, traditions and differences.

"I see things like the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature in a way as my 'Na Han.' It's my assertion of optimism that culture can play a role in improving even very difficult, often difficult relationships like U.S.-China relations. And every time I think about the Newman Prize, I really genuinely feel happy, because it's been one of the few endeavors that I've ever engaged in that has been on a large scale in which I just see it as a positive sum and a win-win-win endeavor in so many different ways."

Gries noted two examples: Involvement in efforts to understand Chinese culture among young people, as evidenced by the Newman Young Writers' Award and an increased understanding by people in the United States of the great humanistic tradition present in Chinese literature.

Gries said he hoped Americans would understand that "while China is a culture that is very different from America, and despite that we have very different histories and identities and ideologies that often lead us to look at each other through prisms of difference, that we share a common humanity."

Gries said the first Newman laureate Mo Yan "is very special in part because while he revels in the particular of the locale of his hometown in Shandong, China, he also brings out that which is common among all of us as human beings. And I think that that message is one that deserves the attention of more and more Americans."

Gries noted that there is disappointment present among many Chinese that the first ethnic Chinese to win a Nobel Prize for literature in 2000, Gao Xingjian, is based in France, but expressed pride that the Newman Prize "is the first major American-based prize for Chinese literature. "

Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Paul Bell, a cosponsor of the university's Chinese literature conference and shaping force of the Confucius Institute at OU, spoke next in Mandarin with translations in English.

After welcoming visiting officials from the Chinese Embassy in Houston, Bell said, "I would also like to congratulate this year's winner of the Newman Prize, Mo Yan."

Bell also recognized the Confucius Institute for helping Chinese and American cultures to connect.

"I personally believe that it is critically important for the future well-being of the world in which we live that people from different national and cultural backgrounds learn to understand and appreciate one another's backgrounds and viewpoints."

After remarks by Dean of the Honors College and Executive Director of World Literature Today magazine, R.C. Davis, the Newman Young Writers Award was presented.

Winning the award for her essay "Taking Flight" was Kosovar exchange student Fitori Kusari, now a senior at Moore High School.

Following the presentation of the youth award was a tribute to Mo Yan by Howard Goldblatt of the University of Notre Dame, who has translated some of Mo Yan's works into English.

"No literate Chinese and few foreigners who read about China are unfamiliar with the name Mo Yan," Goldblatt said, citing Mo Yan's 1985 novel "Red Sorghum" and the 1987 Zhang Yimou film adaptation.

"('Red Sorghum') has been compared with Garcia-Marquez's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude,' a novel he (Mo Yan) claims he has not yet read in its entirety, as cultural milestones," Goldblatt said.

The main event followed, as Mo Yan accepted the 2009 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature from prize sponsors Harold J. and Ruth Newman.

In a speech delivered entirely in Mandarin and immediately thereafter translated partially by Goldblatt after the English translation did not arrive, Mo Yan remarked upon how he changed his name from Guan Mo Yan to Mo Yan 30 years before.

Mo Yan remarked how his new pen name means, "don't talk," which he felt was in keeping with his upbringing, as his father cautioned him to be careful what he said in the then-unstable political climate and during his youth, his mother was always telling the talkative youngster to stop chattering so much.

"But it is easier to change the course of rivers and the shape of mountains than it is to change one's human nature," Mo Yan said.

Mo Yan's "Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out," the novel which won Mo Yan the Newman Prize, has a talkative protagonist who shares his name and goes through a series of lives, deaths and rebirths as animals and eventually a talkative child who grows into a writer.

While the novel was written in Chinese characters, by hand, with a Chinese brush, in 43 days, Mo Yan said it took him 43 years to conceive of the humorous allegorical novel.

"Now, let the author Mo Yan, on behalf of all the animals and all the characters in his novel, extend his appreciation to the Oklahoma Institute for U.S.-China Issue and to the awarders of the Newman Prize, Mr. and Mrs. Newman, to all of the jurors and of course to everyone here," Mo Yan said in closing.

Other notable works by Mo Yan, who has written at least 10 novels and hundreds of short stories, include "The Republic of Wine," "The Garlic Ballads" and the winner of the Chinese "Great Writer Award," "Big Breasts and Wide Hips."

Adam Scott

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pop@normantranscript.com