“Mo’s work embodies the complexity of an artist symbiotically linked to an authoritarian system, despite his frequent claims of the separation of literary and political spheres. (An argument taken up by Pankaj Mishra in relation to Western writers) Mo was a child of the post-Mao literary thaw – a generation that embraced both traditional and avant-garde aesthetics. The shattering of sexual taboo in his novel Red Sorghum was typical of his “hallucinatory realism”.
But while Mo frequently focuses on China’s trouble, these were often criticisms of local exploitation and bureaucracy. His voice is aligned to a state strategy of apportioning blame away from the political centre.
The sinologist Julia Lovell has noticed that “hysterical realism”, the term coined by the literary critic James Wood to describe the chaotic language in some modern fiction, could be readily applied to Mo Yan. Instead of meaningfully engaging with moments of deep national trauma, whether the Great Leap Famine or the Cultural Revolution, Mo seeks refuge in a manic, ironic voice, that dances round open dissent.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9743516/Nobel-winner-Mo-Yan-and-Chinas-cultural-amnesia.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/oct/19/royal-shakespeare-company-asian-actors

You are welcome to visit my site where you will note that my strengths relate to Asian surfing girls and Malian music/ethnography.
I’d like to see Mr O’Kane beat that combination.

Thanks for the link Richard which I visited before commenting.

I saw Bokane’s piece as a neat western bookend to the Beijing’s Mo Mania narrative, which has now gone into overdrive. Vials of dirt taken from his hometown are now going on sale across China.

Further more, I particularly dislike the magical realist genre.

You wrote (#8): “Prejudiced …. sure. Ignoramus… Here I take respectful exception, since that’s libelous.”

I charged you with being an ignoramus because of the following claim (#4):

“Name me twenty (1 every 100 years) books evenly spread across this alleged 2,000 years. O’Kane couldn’t if he tried, and neither could the collective chatterati on this site… Can’t be done, even if we threw in a truckload of Officialdom Fiction.”

Who but a complete ignoramus could possibly believe such a gobsmackingly & obviously untrue statement?

In retrospect, however, & having looked at a few of your other posts, I realise that it’s more likely that you intended your claim simply as a wind-up, while knowing it all the while to be utter BS. In which case I’m happy to withdraw the word “ignoramus”. (Being only an occasional lurker on this site I am obviously not as familiar with your posting style as some of the others on here are.)

In case, however, you really do think that no-one here can name you one “book” for every 100 years of the last 2000 years, (approximately evenly spread), I’m pretty sure that I can oblige. I’m even more sure that Mr O’Kane could. But anyway, since when has that been a defining criterion for the existence of a literary tradition?

Of course. I’m not very busy with Chinese current affairs, civilization, etc.. But if I was a Chinese, the constant hullabaloo about “our thousands-of-years-of-culture” would embarass me. I mean, every Arab, Turk or European could make the same fuss about what he or she “has”. It’s the same cultural area around the Mediterranean, and the same roots. But there’s no need to wear that on ones sleeve. It’s simply there.

But continuity spells no political entitlement to a particular party. Rather, Chinese culture (or civilization) is a great part of human heritage. What I do not believe is that the Chinese state (i. e. the party) owns it. The CCP is not, as they put it themselves, a vigorous leader and developer of advanced Chinese culture. Most of what exists in this field exists despite, not because of the CCP.

Nobody owns Cicero either. But we can all read him, if we want, just as we have access to any Chinese author’s works.