A tale of two Nobel Prizes
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Works by Mo Yan displayed at a bookstore in Shanghai. While the Chinese author's win drew official praise, Beijing's response to the awarding of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to dissident writer Liu Xiaobo was fury. -- PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Two Nobel Prizes, awarded to China's citizens two years apart, provoked such diametrically opposed reactions that it would not have been out of place in one of Mo Yan's sardonic novels.
Fact, indeed, can at times be stranger than fiction.
While the Chinese author's Nobel Literature Prize win on Thursday was greeted with elation and an outpouring of official praise, the response when jailed dissident writer Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 was pure fury.
Mr Liu had just started serving an 11-year jail sentence handed down in December 2009 after he was convicted of state subversion for calling for reforms to China's one-party system.