Industries cash in on Mo Yan's Nobel success

BEIJING -- Chinese cultural and media industries are cashing in on Mo Yan's 2012 Nobel Prize for literature win.

Chinese bookstores are benefiting from his success reporting bumper sales on Friday. Ge Fei, deputy manager of the Beijing-based Wangfujing Book Store, one of China's largest bookstores, said that Mo's novels, including "Red Sorghum" and his latest "Frog", were sold out by 10 am, one hour after opening the shop. Orders for Mo's novels were growing.

A man reads Mo Yan's works at a bookstore in Shanghai, Oct 12, 2012. [Photo / Xinhua]

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It was a similar occurrence in other Beijing bookstores and other cities as well as online bookstores, according to media reports.

Sales of Mo's works have increased at online bookstores this week. The writer's story collections are out of stock on Dangdang.com, the country's leading online book shop.

Spurred by Mo's prize, stocks of cultural and media industries rose across the board on the Shanghai bourse Friday, led by the Shanghai Xinhua Media Co Ltd, which rose by daily limit of 10 percent to close at 6.23 yuan (98 US cents) per share.

More movies based on Mo's novels could be made, according to Shi Xiang, vice-manager of Beijing Genuine & Profound Culture Development Co Ltd. The film "Red Sorghum" was directed by Zhang Yimou in 1987.

Shi forecasts Mo's novels to jump in sales by between 15 and 30 percent.

Mo's novel, "Frog", which earned him the Mao Dun Literature Prize, China's most prestigious award for novels in 2011, has sold nearly 200,000 copies since it was published in 2009.

The 57-year-old Mo has published dozens of novels and gained fame both home and abroad. Mo, a pseudonym for Guan Moye, is incumbent vice-president of the China Writers Association. He grew up in a village in East China's Shandong province.

Mo won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday for his work which "with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary". He is the first Chinese citizen to win the prize.