On October 11th, the Nobel Prize committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced in Stockholm that the Chinese writer Mo Yan, "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary," had won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2012. Mo became the first Chinese national to win the award.

Mo Yan (formerly Guan Moye) was born in Gaomi, east China's Shandong Province and is now being a famous contemporary writer in China. Mo says his writing style tends to reflect China's rural and folk culture. In August, 2011, Mo won the Mao Dun Literature Prize for his novel Frog.

For a long time, Mo has had a close relationship with SDU. In the autumn of 1988, a seminar concerning the works of Mo Yan was held by scholars of SDU in his hometown. In 1992, Prof. He Lihua from the School of Literature and Journalism, who majored in modern and contemporary literature, participated in editing a book called Materials for the Research of Mo Yan (Shandong University Publishing House, 1992). On June 4th, 2001, Shandong University employed this writer, who is globally known for the novel Red Sorghum, as an adjunct professor of the School of Literature and Journalism. Ever since, Mo has lectured part time at SDU and taught several classes of postgraduates together with professor He Lihua. Starting next year, Mo will work together with the Dean of School of Literature and Journalism Zheng Chun in teaching postgraduates.