Dear academicians, ladies and gentlemen of Swedish Institute:

Through TV or the Internet, I think all of you here have learned more or less about the distant northeast town of Gaomi. You may have seen my 9-year-old father, my brother and sister, my wife and daughter, and my granddaughter who is one year and four months old. But there is one person I miss most at this moment, my mother, which you will never see. After I won the prize, many people shared my glory, but my mother couldn't.

My mother was born in 1922 and died in 1994. Her ashes are buried in the Taoyuan in the east of the village. In 211, a railway will pass through there, and we have to move her grave to a place farther away from the village. After digging the grave, we saw that the coffin had decayed, and the mother's bone colonization had been mixed with the soil. We had to symbolically dig up some dirt and move it to a new grave. That is, from that moment on, I felt that my mother was a part of the earth, and what I said when I stood on the earth was what I said to my mother.

I am the youngest child of my mother. The earliest thing I remember is carrying the only thermos bottle at home to open the water in the canteen. Because of hunger, I accidentally broke the thermos bottle. I was so scared that I got into the haystack and didn't dare to come out for a day. In the evening, I heard my mother calling my birth name. I got out of the haystack and thought I would be beaten and scolded, but my mother didn't beat me or scold me. She just stroked my head and let out a long sigh.

The most painful thing in my memory is that I followed my mother to the collective field to pick the ears of wheat. The guards of the wheat fields came, and the people who picked the ears of wheat fled one after another. My mother was a little foot and couldn't run fast, so she was caught. The tall guard slapped her in the face, and she shook her body and fell to the ground. The guard confiscated the ears of wheat we picked up and whistled away. My mother's mouth was bleeding and she sat on the ground. I will never forget the look of despair on her face. Many years later, when the man guarding the wheat field became a white-haired old man and met me at the market, I rushed up to get revenge on him. My mother took hold of me and said to me calmly, "Son, the man who hit me is not alone with this old man."

The most profound thing I remember is that at noon on the Mid-Autumn Festival, our family had a rare meal of jiaozi, and each person only had one bowl. While we were eating jiaozi, an old beggar came to our door. I picked up half a bowl of dried sweet potatoes to send him away, but he said indignantly, "I am an old man. You eat jiaozi, but you let me eat dried sweet potatoes. How long are your hearts? " I said angrily, "We can't eat jiaozi several times a year. We can't even eat half a full bowl for each person! It's good to give you dried sweet potatoes. If you want it, you can have it, or you can leave! " Mother scolded me, then took her half bowl of jiaozi and poured it into the old man's bowl.

One thing I regret most is that I followed my mother to sell cabbage, and intentionally or unintentionally I overcharged an old man who bought cabbage by 1 cents. I went to school after calculating the money. When I came home from school, I saw my mother, who seldom shed tears, was in tears. My mother didn't scold me, but said softly, "Son, you embarrassed my mother."

when I was a teenager, my mother suffered from severe lung disease, hunger, illness and fatigue, which put our family in a predicament and could not see the light and hope. I have a strong sense of foreboding that my mother will commit suicide at any time. Whenever I come back from work, I call out to my mother as soon as I enter the gate. When I hear her response, I feel a stone fall to the ground. If I don't hear her response for a while, I will be frightened and run to the kitchen and mill to look for it. Once I searched all the rooms and didn't see my mother, so I sat in the yard and cried. Then mother came in from the outside with a bundle of firewood on her back. She is very dissatisfied with my crying, but I can't tell her my worries. Mother saw my thoughts, and she said, "Don't worry, son. Although I have no fun in life, I won't go as long as the terrifying doesn't call me."

I was born ugly. Many people in the village laughed at me to my face, and several students at school even beat me for it. I went home and cried, and my mother said to me, "Son, you are not ugly. You have no nose or eyes, and your limbs are sound. Where is the ugliness?" And as long as you are kind and do more good deeds, even ugliness can become beautiful. " Later, when I entered the city, some well-educated people still mocked my appearance behind my back and even to my face. I remembered my mother's words and apologized to them calmly.

my mother can't read, but she has great respect for people who can read. Life in our family is difficult, and we often eat the last meal without the next. But as long as I ask her for books and stationery, she will always satisfy me. She is a hard-working person and hates lazy children, but as long as I miss my work because of reading, she never criticizes me.

at one time, a storyteller came to the market. I secretly went to listen to the book and forgot the work she assigned me. For this reason, my mother criticized me. In the evening, when she was making cotton-padded clothes for her family with a small oil lamp, I couldn't help repeating the stories I heard from storytellers during the day. At first, she was a little impatient, because in her mind, storytellers are glib and do nothing, and they can't come up with good words. But the story I repeated gradually attracted her, and she stopped giving me work every gathering day and acquiesced in my listening to books. In order to repay my mother's kindness and show off my memory, I will tell her the stories I heard during the day vividly.

Soon, I won't be satisfied with retelling the story told by the storyteller. In the process of retelling, I will constantly embellish it. I will vote for my mother's liking, make up some plots and sometimes even change the ending of the story. My audience is not only my mother, but also my sister, my aunt and my grandmother. After listening to my story, my mother sometimes worries, like telling me or talking to herself: "Son, what will you be when you grow up?" Do you have to eat by playing loquacious? "

I understand my mother's concern, because in the village, a talkative child is boring and sometimes brings trouble to himself and his family. The child I wrote in the novel "Cow" who was hated by the village because of his words had the shadow of my childhood. My mother often reminds me to talk less. She hopes I can be a quiet, stable and generous child. But in my body, I show my strong speaking ability and great desire to speak, which is undoubtedly a great danger, but my ability to tell stories has brought her pleasure, which has caused her to fall into deep contradictions.

As the saying goes, "A leopard cannot change his spots." Although I have been taught by my parents, I haven't changed my nature of liking to talk, which makes my name "Mo Yan" look like a satire on myself.

I dropped out of primary school before I graduated. Because I was too young and weak to do heavy work, I had to go to the grassland to graze cattle and sheep. When I passed by the school gate with cattle and sheep and saw my former classmates fighting in the campus, my heart was full of sadness and I deeply realized the pain of a person, even a child, after leaving the group.

when I got to the desert beach, I released the cattle and sheep and let them graze by themselves. The blue sky is like the sea, and the grass is endless. There is no figure around, no voice, only birds singing in the sky. I feel lonely, lonely, and my heart is empty. Sometimes, I lie on the grass and look at the white clouds fluttering lazily in the sky, and many inexplicable illusions emerge in my mind. There are many stories about foxes turning into beautiful women in our place. I fantasized that a fox could turn into a beautiful woman to accompany me in herding cattle, but she never appeared. But once, when a lux fox jumped out of the grass in front of me, I was scared and squatted on the ground. The fox ran away, and I was still shivering there. Sometimes I will squat down beside the cow and look at the blue eyes and my reflection in the eyes of the cow. Sometimes I try to talk to the birds in the sky by imitating the songs of birds, and sometimes I tell my heart to a tree. But the birds ignored me and the trees ignored me. Many years later, when I became a novelist, many fantasies of that year were written into novels by me. Many people praise me for my rich imagination, and some literary lovers hope that I can tell them the secret of cultivating imagination. I can only smile at this.

As Lao Zi, the sage of China, said, "Misfortune is a good place to lean on, and fortune is a bad place to lurk." I dropped out of school in my childhood and suffered from hunger, loneliness and lack of books to read, but like our predecessor Shen Congwen, I started reading this big book on social life as early as possible. The above-mentioned going to the market and hearing that the scholars tell stories is only one page in this big book.

After dropping out of school, I mingled with adults and started a long career of "reading with my ears". More than 2 years ago, there was a great story-telling genius Pu Songling in my hometown. Many people in our village, including me, were his descendants. I listened to many stories of ghosts and gods, historical legends and anecdotes in the fields of collective labor, in the cowshed and stable of the production team, on the hot kang of my grandparents, and even on the rickety ox cart. These stories are closely related to the local natural environment and family history, which makes me have a strong sense of reality.

I never dreamed that these things would become my writing materials one day. I was just a child obsessed with stories and listened to people's stories with rapture. At that time, I was an absolute theist. I believed that everything was spiritual, and I would be in awe when I saw a big tree. When I see a bird, I will feel that it will change into an adult at any time. When I meet a stranger, I will also suspect that it is an animal. Whenever I come home from the workshop of the production team at night, endless fear surrounds me. In order to be courageous, I sing loudly while running. At that time, I was in a period of voice change, my voice was hoarse and my tone was ugly. My singing was a torture to my villagers.

I have lived in my hometown for twenty-one years. During this period, I went to Qingdao by train farthest from home, and almost got lost among the huge timber in the timber factory, so that when my mother asked me what scenery I saw when I went to Qingdao, I told her in dismay: I saw nothing but piles of wood. But it was this trip to Qingdao that gave me a strong desire to leave my hometown and see the world outside.

in February, 1976, I enlisted in the army, sold my wedding jewelry behind my mother's back and bought four compendiums of China's general history for me. I walked out of Gaomi Northeast Township, a place that I loved and hated, and started an important period of my life. I must admit that without the great development and progress of China society over the past 3 years, and without the reform and opening up, there would be no writer like me.

In the boring life in the military camp, I ushered in the ideological emancipation and literary upsurge in the 198s. I started telling stories with a pen from a child who listened to stories with his ears and told stories with his mouth. At first, the road was not smooth. I didn't realize that my experience in rural life for more than 2 years was a rich mine of literature. At that time, I thought that literature was about writing good deeds and heroic models. Therefore, although several works were published, the literary value was very low.

in the autumn of p>1984, I was admitted to the literature department of PLA Art College. Under the guidance of my famous writer Xu Huaizhong, I wrote a number of short stories such as Autumn Water, Dry River, Transparent Carrots and Red Sorghum. In the novel Autumn Water, the word "Gaomi Northeast Township" appeared for the first time. Since then, just like a wandering farmer has a piece of land, a literary tramp like me finally has a place to settle down. I must admit that in the process of creating my literary territory "Gaomi Northeast Township", william faulkner in the United States and Garcí a Má rquez in Colombia gave me important inspiration. I am not serious about their reading, but their pioneering spirit inspired me and made me understand that a writer must have a place of his own. One should be humble and give in in daily life, but in literary creation, one must be bossy and arbitrary. I followed these two masters for two years, that is, I realized that I must escape from them as soon as possible. I wrote in an article: They are two burning stoves, and I am an ice cube. If I get too close to them, I will be evaporated by them. According to my experience, the reason why a writer is influenced by a certain writer lies in the similarities between the influencer and the affected person. The so-called "yet I feel the harmonious heart-beat of the Sacred Unicorn". So, although I didn't read their books well, I only read a few pages, and I understood what they did and how they did it, and then I understood what I should do and how I should do it.

what I should do is actually very simple, that is, tell my own story in my own way. My way is the way I am familiar with market storytellers, and the way my grandparents and the old people in the village tell stories. Frankly speaking, when I told it, I didn't think who would be my audience. Maybe my audience was people like my mother, maybe my audience was myself. My own story was my personal experience from the beginning, such as the child who was beaten up in Dry River, such as the child who didn't say a word from beginning to end in Transparent Carrots. I did get beaten up by my father for doing something wrong, and I did pull the bellows for the blacksmith on the bridge site. Of course, personal experiences, no matter how strange, can't be written into novels intact. Novels must be fictional and imaginative. Many friends say that Transparent Carrot is my best novel, which I don't refute or agree with, but I think Transparent Carrot is the most symbolic and meaningful one of my works. The child who is dark all over and has superhuman endurance and superhuman sensibility is the soul of all my novels. Although I wrote many characters in later novels, no one is closer to my soul than him. In other words, among the characters created by a writer, there is always a leader. This silent child is a leader. He said nothing, but he effectively led all kinds of characters and performed heartily on the stage of Gaomi Northeast Township.

Your own story is always limited. When you finish your own story, you must tell others' stories. Thus, the stories of my relatives, the stories of my villagers, and the stories of my ancestors I heard from the old people, just like the soldiers who heard the assembly order, poured out of my memory. They looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to write about them. My grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, wife and daughter have all appeared in my works, and many villagers in Gaomi Northeast Township have also appeared in my novels. Of course, I treated them all in a literary way, making them surpass themselves and become characters in literature.

In my latest novel Frog, the image of my aunt appeared. Because I won the Nobel Prize, many reporters visited her house. At first, she patiently answered questions, but soon she got bored and went to her son's house in the county to hide. My aunt was really my model when I wrote Frog, but the novel