GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was probably the most-read contemporary foreign writer in China for more than three decades.

    His work swept the Chinese literary scene since being first introduced in the early 1980s. He armed generations of Chinese writers with fresh skills, and triggered a new literary trend called “root searching school.”

    Chinese Nobel laureate in literature Mo Yan, once known as “Chinese Garcia Marquez,” said he had tried to escape the great Spanish-language writer’s influence for 20 years.

    “Since the 1960s, no other books have such extensive and long standing influence in the world as ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude,’” Mo said.

    In the early 1980s, a Garcia Marquez book was the most stunning accessory a young Chinese could get. Most readers then, who have become the country’s established writers, were astounded by the way “writers can tell the stories like this,” said Yang Ling, translator of Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera.”

    “His works are like delicacies to a hungry man,” veteran writer Mai Jia recalled of his first reading of Garcia Marquez.

    Writer and literary critic Xu Zechen believes Garcia Marquez liberated Chinese literary imagination and brought a whole new world to readers.

    Chen Zhongyi, a top Spanish-language scholar with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said there were historical reasons for Chinese appreciation of Garcia Marquez. “They saw hope from him that writers from developing countries can go that far.”

    It’s said the writer visited China in 1990 but was disappointed by privacy problems and was reluctant to authorize books to Chinese publishers. After the mid-1990s, things changed as China joined international copyright conventions. “Publishing Garcia Marquez in China has become a dream every publisher crave and we finally made it in 2011,” said Li Yao, editor from Thinkingdom, adding that “One Hundred Years of Solitude” sold 2.6 million in more than two years. (SD-Agencies)