Awards alone don't get Chinese authors noticed

Since Yan Lianke won the prestigious Franz Kafka Prize earlier this month, Chinese media have been discussing the influence Chinese authors wield on the global arena. Some literary critics and business insiders, however, are urging people to see things in perspective.

As a group, Chinese authors' global influence is weak, although novelist Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2012, and Yan the Kafka award this year, according to Gao Xing, literary critic and editor-in-chief of World Literature, which is a Beijing-based bimonthly magazine and a pioneer in bringing foreign literature to China.

"Both are individual cases that can't represent a group," Gao told China Daily.

"There's a great imbalance in our introduction and familiarity of foreign literature," he says of China's promotion of Western literature in the country, without similar reciprocation from the West.

Gao frequents international literary forums and cultural exchange programs. He says he often finds it tough to discuss Chinese writing with foreign critics because they aren't aware of contemporary Chinese literature or don't know most of the authors.

But a Chinese literary critic is more likely to be familiar with foreign writers, who have some influence even in their own countries, he says.

Gao believes the lack of quality translation is an important reason why contemporary Chinese writers aren't well-known in other parts of the world.

Chen Feng, deputy editor-in-chief of Shanghai 99 Readers' Culture Co, believes that social turbulences, such as the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), have hindered the evolution of contemporary literature in China, weakening its global position.

"Quality Chinese contemporary literature was rare until the 1990s, and Chinese literature started going abroad only after 2000," Chen says. "It's not possible for Chinese literature to find international influence in such a short time."

It is understandable that Chinese want their literature to travel widely into the world, but such things take time, Chen adds.

Ahmed Alsaeed, a translator and copyright agent from Egypt, says that Chinese should be confident about the reach of their literature. As the country's influence on the world stage grows, more foreign readers are likely to become interested in China and read books by local authors.

Like him, many foreigners are learning Chinese in different parts of the world.

"Chinese people are modest, and some tend to think that foreign literature is better than Chinese. That's not right," Alsaeed says.

(China Daily USA 10/29/2014 page11)