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1 prol o gu e O n 12 October 2000, when Gao Xingjian (1940–), a Chinese-born novelist and playwright then living in France, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, China’s century-long quest for Nobel glory finally came to an end.1 Chinese intellectuals and politicians had worried for decades over when a Nobel Literature Prize would come to China, but the lack of a Chinese laureate was now, it seemed, resolved and the mystique of the prize dispelled. A Chinese writer had been acclaimed “for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama.”2 Gao’s work, the Swedish Academy explained, was in touch both with Western modernism and the flow of sources from popular Chinese drama. Chinese literature could live happily ever after, basking in its global significance. Reactions to Gao’s prize soon dashed such hopes, however, as rumors and accusations of politicization began to circulate on both sides of the East-West ideological divide and throughout the global Chinese community. The government in Beijing responded by denouncing the “political purposes” of the Nobel Prize, declaring the prize had lost legitimacy and calling Gao a “French writer.” Outside China, Gao was an unknown quantity. In the wave of panic that swept the Western media on the afternoon of October 12—Who is he? What’s he written? How’s his name pronounced?—many reached for one of the first security blankets of nonspecialist reporting on contemporary Chinese culture and literature: Gao Xingjian is an exiled dissident. Writers in China displayed mixed feelings. Although pleased by this symbolic recognition for literature in Chinese and critical of the government’s knee-jerk condemnation of the prize, many were ambivalent about the political significance of honoring an exile who was relatively unknown in China at the time of the award.3 Chinese people in other parts of the world, meanwhile, were delighted that Gao as a Chinese had won a Nobel, even though Gao had for some time disassociated himself from China the nation-state and had shown little interest in being published or reaching readers there since his 1987 departure for France. Finally, a closer look at the Swedish Academy’s commendation of 2 Prologue Gao reveals that despite praise for his “universal validity”—thereby implying that his prize was awarded for the universal artistic value of his oeuvre—the Academy’s press release and presentation speech commended by name only those of his works that make reference to, and largely adopt a dissident stance towards, Chinese politics: his two novels Lingshan (Soul mountain) and Yige ren de shengjing (One man’s bible), and his play Taowang (Fleeing).4 All these imputations, refutations, and confusions of identity show that writing in Chinese on a global stage—especially if it wins a Nobel Prize—is still a highly contested undertaking. ...

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