Gaomi Officials Want to Transform Village After Mo Yan Nobel Win
Gaomi officials take the cake for economic opportunism.
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One week after Mo Yan became the first Chinese author to win the Nobel Prize, proud local officials rushed out a $110-million plan to transform his sleepy village into a “Mo Yan Culture Experience Zone.”
Until last week, the county of Gaomi in the eastern province of Shandong was a poor farming community. It was here that Mo ate tree bark and searched for wild vegetables to survive a tough childhood.
When reporters tracked down Mo, 57, to his family home, they found his 90-yearold father working the farm, unperturbed by the hullabaloo. But now, ambitious Communist party chiefs see a glorious future for the county as tourists flock to pay homage to the Nobel Prize winner.
On Tuesday, Fan Hui, a local official, paid a visit to Mo’s father to ask him to renovate the family home.
“Your son is no longer your son, and the house is no longer your house,” urged Fan, according to the Beijing News, explaining that the author was now the pride of China. “It does not really matter if you agree or not,” he added.
Fan has earmarked the family home as the main attraction of the Mo Yan Culture Experience Zone, but also has plans to create a theme park based on Mo’s 1987 work, Red Sorghum.
Unwanted and unprofitable, sorghum is no longer planted in the area, but this is not regarded as an obstacle.
Fan said the “Red Sorghum Culture and Experience Zone.” which includes the “Red Sorghum Film and Television Exhibition Area,” would encourage villagers to plant 640 hectares of the crop. “(We need to grow it) even if it means losing money,” he told the Chinese media.
He said the prize had been a boon. Without a mountain or a river, Gaomi had been too plain to be a tourist destination.
As Gaomi’s restaurants rush to add “Red Sorghum” to their signs, villagers have been instructed to raise a glass to Mo before meals, and Li Danping, a local poet, said the county was now “the higher ground of Chinese literature, the sacred land of the country”.
Mo’s books are widely sold-out and his fans are already descending in droves, suggesting there will be demand for the proposed development.
“One visitor dug up a radish (from Mo’s vegetable patch),” reported the Beijing News. “He slipped it into his coat and showed it to villagers afterwards, saying: ‘Mo’s radish! Mo’s radish!'”
“A visiting mother picked some yams and told her daughter, ‘I’ll boil them, so you can eat them and win the Nobel Prize, too!'”
Mo’s brother, Guan Moxin, was forced to intervene to stop the family’s corn harvest, which was left lying out in the sun to dry, being swept away by the village tidying committee.
Mo has been non-committal amid the excitement. Asked by China Central Television whether he was happy, he responded, “I do not know.”
Asked by Xinhua, the state news agency, whether his win would ignite a passion for literature in China, he said, “I think it will last for a month at most, maybe less, then everything will return to normal.”
He said he planned to use his $1.18-million U.S. prize money to buy a “big house” in Beijing. But then he realized that property prices have soared so high he could only afford a two-bedroom apartment.
His brother, however, suggested that he is unlikely to be thrilled at the plans for a tourist park. “He will oppose any renovations even though he has won the award. It is too public, people should be low key,” Guan said to a Chinese paper.
Mo’s wife, Du Qinlan, said the writer had not earned much money over his career, and his biggest treat is “a plate of dumplings’.
– Daily Telegraph