A Storyteller – a fictitious Nobel Literature Prize Speech 

(Based on Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize Speech and the book The Alchemist.  The speech also reflects elements of my father’s life.  Born in a poor farmer family, my father wasn’t able to receive good education but he has always loved writing.  He taught himself to read and write, and has published 5 books on poetry and short essays)

Distinguished members of the Swedish Academy, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Sixty years ago, I was born in a village near the Northeast City of China called Harbin.  In the 50s, when China was still struggling to feed its 600 million people, my entertainment as a child was to listen to stories told by my grandmother and other elderly people in the neighborhood.  Every night, I begged grandma to tell one story after another until I fell asleep on the bed I shared with her.  My grandmother was born in 1900 and died in 1990.  She never learned to read a single word, but she had a treasure box of endless stories which had been passed on to her generation after generation.  I was a like sponge, soaking every story into my heart and soul; and those stories have stayed with me ever since.

My grandmother always told me, “Rui’er, learn to read and follow your dreams.  Don’t be like me. I cannot read and I have no control of my life.  I married a man whom I met at my wedding for the first time.  I had 8 children; 2 died when they were young.  My heart was broken, but I had no choice and no control.  You must pursue your own life.” 

We were so poor at that time and we often did not know where our next meal was coming from, yet my family never denied my request to buy a book or something to write with as long as they could afford it.

It did not take long to find retelling someone else’s stories unsatisfying, so I began embellishing my narration. I’d say things I knew would please grandmother, even changed the ending once in a while. And she wasn’t the only member of my audience, which later included my mom and kids in the neighborhood.  Sometimes, after my mother had listened to one of my stories, she’d ask in a care-laden voice, almost as if to herself: "What will you be like when you grow up, dear? Might you wind up prattling for a living one day?"

By the time I was in school, schools were not functioning as the cultural revolution-, which lasted for ten years-, had begun.  I often went hungry, was constantly lonely, and had no books to read.  Nevertheless, for those reasons, I had an early start on reading the great book of life. My experience of going to the marketplace to listen to a storyteller was but one page of that book.  Our Taoist master Laozi said it best: "Fortune depends on misfortune. Misfortune is hidden in fortune."  Even in my wildest dreams, I could not have envisioned a day when all this would be the stuff of my own fiction. 

I eventually got a job in the army and settled down in life.  My job was to document the army history. I was twenty years old and I could continue to live the rest of my life going to the same office every day.  But deep down in my heart, I had a burning desire to tell stories and write about the characters I had become acquainted with since childhood.  

The process of creation is unique to every writer. Each of my novels differs from the others in terms of plot and guiding inspiration.  When my first book The Alchemist was published twenty years ago in my native Chinese, no one noticed.  For one year, only two copies were sold.  But I never lost faith in the book or ever wavered in my vision.  Why?  Because it was me in there, all of me, heart and soul.  I was living my own metaphor.  A man sets out on a journey, dreaming of a beautiful or magical place, in pursuit of some unknown treasure.   I was following my Personal Legend, and my treasure was my capacity to write. I wanted to share this treasure with the world.  The Alchemist continues all these years later to resonate with people from different cultures all around the world, touching them emotionally and spiritually, equally without prejudice.

At the end of my speech, I want to say I am a storyteller, and that is what I am good at and what I have loved all my life (or what I will always love).  Telling stories has earned me the Nobel Prize in Literature.   Many interesting things have happened to me in the wake of winning the prize, and they have convinced me that truth and justice are alive and well.

So I will continue telling my stories in the days to come.

Thank you all.