By Marzia De Giuli

ROME, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- Chinese writer Mo Yan winning the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature was a very positive piece of news that will help culture-based communication between China and the rest of the world, Italian experts said here on Thursday.

For Antonella Nonino, organizer of the International Nonino Prize - a prestigious literature prize founded by the homonym Italian distillery in 1975 with the aim of underlining the permanent actuality of rustic life - Mo Yan's award was an "extremely happy event."

The Nonino Prize had awarded the Chinese writer early in 2005, "when our international jury chaired in that edition by Ermanno Olmi (a renowned Italian film director) awarded Mo Yan for his outstanding capacity to depict the rural tradition of his millenary country," she told Xinhua.

"Since then and thanks to Mo Yan, I have established a strong relation with the Chinese culture, whose origins and values emerge so vividly in his works," Nonino said.

"When I had the opportunity to visit China, I found out that country was not so distant as one could imagine for fear or lack of knowledge. Instead its shares a lot of cultural elements with Italy," she added.

"China has the same ancient rural tradition as Italy, and Mo Yan, who was born into a farmers' family and had the experiences of working in the countryside, was especially able to tell the beauty and richness of his country," Nonino said.

"Nowadays, everybody likes to describe China as an industrialized nation which is running at incredible growth rate, but it is also fundamental to remember about its ancient history," she said.

Alessandra Lavagnino, a well-known sinologist in Italy and professor of Chinese language and culture at University of Milan, welcomed Mo Yan's award "as if a member of my family had been awarded."

"It was touching for me to learn that a great Chinese writer has been acknowledged as a distinguished author in the international literature," she told Xinhua.

She said it was Mo Yan's "extraordinary narrative ability to make readers encounter with the feelings and heart of China's profound roots" to impress the Swedish Academy in Stockholm.

Mo Yan's ability to merge history and modernity offered to the world a more genuine and limpid access to the Asian country, because "literature is a powerful tool for communication between different cultures," Lavagnino added.

What most hit Luciano Minerva, a journalist for state Rai television and book writer, when he interviewed Mo Yan a few years ago, was the writer's "great humbleness and link with his rural roots."

"Visiting Italy's countryside, Mo Yan was happy to learn about the life and customs here, and was always caring the people around him," he told Xinhua.

"Getting to know each other in such a kind-hearted way allows every people of the world to widen horizons, and literature is a precious element of this open dialogue," Minerva said.

In his view, cultural heritage including literature and cinema plays a fundamental role in helping China become better known and appreciated in Italy.

"And this Nobel will certainly allow us to encounter a more authentic China," he said. Enditem

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