Icons discuss how to tell 'China's story'

Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan. [Photo/Xinhua]

China's Nobel laureate storyteller, Mo Yan, is perhaps the best placed to tell China's stories. That's why he, along with 44 other cultural icons - including Yao Ming, Lang Lang and Jackie Chan - was named an "ambassador of Chinese storytelling" in a meeting in Beijing hosted by the State Council Information Office on Friday.

"As China becomes a big player in the world, from the government leaders down to the ordinary people, all tell China's stories to the world. Some of them use words, others use their actions. For example, our workers help build bridges and highways abroad, doctors and nurses work in Africa, the Chinese Navy fights piracy in the Gulf of Aden. ... Their stories are juicy sources forus Chinese writers," Mo said.

When people say somebody has the ability or the power, he said, it is not his personal ability, but the power from his family, his team and all things that back him.

"To me, the power comes from China, the country suffering so much in past hundred years. I draw nutrition and inspiration from the country."

"What's more, even the fast developing economy, science and technology provide sources to foreign creators," he said referring to the Hollywood movie The Martian, in which a Chinese space station helps in the rescue of a US astronaut.

The 2015 Hugo Award winning science fiction writer Liu Cixin, who also attended the meeting, had ideas similar to Mo. He said, "A country's booming economy and flourishing culture provide sci-fi writers with rich imagination." But how best to tell China's story? As a writer, Mo said his personal experience is to start from his own stories, the stories of his family and friends.

"I don't assume my readers are Chinese or foreigners. I believe that emotion and human nature are universal."