Nobel laureate Mo Yan says short videos inspired new book

(ECNS) -- Chinese Nobel laureate Mo Yan has announced a new book, his first in six years, saying the idea was inspired by short videos.

The 81-piece collection Ren Na or Oh, Humanity in English, will be officially launched with a livestreamed event on the Chinese social platform RedNote at 3 p.m. on April 19, Mo said in a video posted on Sunday.

"I love watching short videos, just like everyone else. I often can't stop — it's addictive," he said. Although he tries to limit himself to half an hour a day, he admitted that "before I know it, three hours have passed."

That experience inspired him to explore whether a book could capture readers' attention in a similar way. "So I thought: could I create a book that attracts readers like short videos? And that's how the book came about."

The collection is Mo's first work in the traditional Chinese "notes" style – a form characterized by short, anecdotal entries. The shortest piece is around 200 Chinese characters, and most stories can be finished in five to ten minutes.

In the book's preface, Mo writes: "Nowadays, even someone as old as I am finds it hard to resist the urge to scroll through videos. Please 'scroll through' my short stories the way you scroll through short videos."

He described the collection as drawing on "more than 70 years of insights and reflections on life and human nature."

Mo Yan, whose real name is Guan Moye, was born in 1955 in Gaomi, east China's Shandong Province. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012 and is best known for works such as Red Sorghum and Frog.

(By Zhang Dongfang)