Tourism project to reproduce scenes from Nobel winner Mo Yan’s novel

Tourists take photos at the shooting site of the TV show Red Sorghum, Oct 5, 2014. [Photo/IC]

Two years after Chinese writer Mo Yan won the Nobel prize for literature, his novel Red Sorghum has been adapted into a popular TV series. His hometown, Gaomi in Shandong province, is building a tourist destination for the public to better understand the writer and his works.

According to Chengdu Business Daily, the county of Gaomi plans to build a 1.67 billion yuan ($273 million) "Mo Yan Culture Experience Tourism Project". Built around the writer's old home, the destination is intended to bring famous scenes from Mo's novels to life.

Tourists from around the country actually started to flood the small town soon after Mo won his prize, and especially after the shooting of TV series Red Sorghum took place in Gaomi. It stars famous actress Zhou Xun as the heroine.

In the novel, the boundless fields of red sorghum at Gaomi in August were splendid, mournful yet passionate, in Mo's description, which is unforgettable for many readers.

The Chinese audience is no stranger to the show's plot, which tells of a young couple's love story amid rebellion and war in 1930s Gaomi. The novel also was previously adapted in Zhang Yimou's award-winning film.

The TV show made its debut last week, and the 2 square kilometers of red sorghum planted at the shooting site last year for the TV show is now a popular tourist attraction.

Among the 13 attractions built for the TV show, two of them have opened to the public, with an admission charge of 10 yuan on weekdays and 20 yuan on weekends. As many as 6,000 people each day could visit the shooting site recently, according to Chengdu Business Daily, quoting a project employee.

Besides scenes from Red Sorghum, more images from Mo's literature, such as the singing wall, the transparent carrot and the wharf of frogs, are also expected to be presented as attractions. Mo Yan is not involved in the project.