An author's advice: Live true to yourself, says Nobel winner Gao Xingjian
Visiting Nobel laureate says living as the 'conception of a person' and not for our own selves makes it easier for others to label and then control us
A person must first be true to himself and not to a label in order to stay free from manipulation by others, a Nobel Prize-winning author has advised.
"In today's globalised world, financial capital operates without boundary. Then why shouldn't we? Aren't we human beings smarter than capital?" asked Gao Xingjian, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000.
The French-Chinese writer, 74, addressed an enthusiastic crowd at the University of Science and Technology yesterday at the end of an international forum on his work, which includes novels, films and paintings.
Gao made the remarks in response to comments on Soul Mountain, the 1990 novel-cum-memoir that made him the first ethnic Chinese writer to win the prize when it was translated into English 14 years ago.
"There are many ways of reading it, but [it's] definitely not about searching [for] my national roots, as some have claimed. It's something that never ran through my mind during writing," he said.
"People talk about social identity, national identity or cultural identity. But why should we be confined by these labels if financial capital has none in the globalised world," asked the Paris-based writer.
"I think we should, first of all, live the life of a true person - one that has vigour, emotions and predicaments - and not the conception of a person, which can easily turn into a label for others to manipulate and control," he said.