Gabriel Garcia Marquez and China

According to Li, the seven titles published have sold four million copies, among which One Hundred Years of Solitude sold 2.6 million in more than two years.

“The number in the 1980s and 1990s before the International Copyright Conventions was estimated to exceed tens of millions,” Li said, adding he felt Chinese readers sympathize with Garcia Marques’ works for “being more continental than insular”.

According to the Modern Press, their Chinese version of Ilan Stavans’ biography Gabriel Garcia Marquez: The early years 1927-1970 has sold 50,000 copies.

Veteran scholar Chen feels sad as if losing an old friend. Chen visited the master twice. “The big loss to us is that a great tradition may fade away after Garcia Marquez’s death,” Chen said.

Chen is referring to “creative inheritance of national tradition” for which the master sets a perfect example, and from which established Chinese writers like Mo Yan got the same essence.

“Gabo seems to be under great influence of Western modern skills in writing, but is a writer full of responsibility to continue shaping the cultural identity of his country,” Chen said.

“I see less and less young Chinese writers cherish the same ambition and duty to worry about the stance of our national culture and national emotion in the whole, which is dangerous,” he added.

To Chen, Garcia Marques is like an elder relative from one’s family.

Chen said the master was a big fan of actress Greta Lovisa Gustafsson. He even visited her in Paris after his Nobel win in 1982.

“Meeting his idol in older age, he carefully helped to blow away an eyelash from her eyes,” Chen said.

And he surprised the widow of his house owner in Paris for repaying the (small amount of) rent he owned some 30 years ago,” Chen said, adding the writer fled to Paris in the 1950s.

“As such, he was a good guy who remembered to return every tiny favor he owned,” Chen added.