LIMITED EFFECT IN REVERSING READING DECLINE
"With more means available to pass one's spare time now, such as chatting online and listening to music, one's reading time will definitely end up shorter," Mo said.
Mo said he did not expect his Nobel Prize in Literature to boost Chinese people's reading habits despite the buzz his winning has created.
"I think the mania will end in one month, maybe even sooner and then everything will be back to normal," said the Nobel laureate.
A survey by the Chinese Academy of Press and Publication showed that in 2011, an average Chinese person read 4.3 books a year, far fewer than the average in Western countries.
LITERATURE WILL NEVER PERISH
"Literature is a rather desolate and lonely field throughout the world. It's not like films and other media that attracts a huge audience," Mo said.
Mo said he once read an article in which the writer was worried that there would not be any readers for novels after seeing people swarm to see Hollywood films in the 1930s.
Decades later, people still hold pessimistic views over literature. And now besides films, internet and television drag more people away from literature, he said.
The writer, however, said "It (literature) will never perish."
Literature is an art of language and its language beauty could not be replaced by the beauties of other arts, he said.
Even if you are reading again and again a master's book, you could still be touched by the beauty of the language and fates of the characters inside, he said. "I believe it's the beauty and charm of the language. And this will never perish."
