As artificial intelligence increasingly shapes human experience, a renowned Chinese writer has offered a timeless counterpoint: literature, rooted in love and wisdom, remains the truest bridge between human hearts. Author and cultural scholar Xuemo delivered a keynote address titled "Using Literature to Connect the World: Wisdom and Transcendence in the AI Era" at the 10th World Association for Chinese Studies Conference (WACS 10), held August 14 at the University of Hong Kong.
Xuemo's paper was featured on the front page of the conference journal, drawing immediate attention from international scholars. Speaking to a packed hall, Xuemo described his creative process as entering a state of "holistic consciousness"—shedding ego and sensory limits to let the work emerge as a natural response to human suffering and aspiration. "Love and wisdom," he said, "are the soul of great literature." His ideas struck a chord across disciplines.
Professor Richard Van Ness Simmons, Director of Chinese Studies at the University of Hong Kong, highlighted Xuemo's masterful use of Liangzhou dialect—a linguistic treasure that carries five thousand years of agrarian heritage. He noted that Xuemo's painstaking collaboration with translator Howard Goldblatt, involving millions of characters of dialogue over every dialectal nuance, sets a new standard for cross-cultural fidelity.
European Academy of Sciences member Professor Martin Woesler drew compelling parallels between Xuemo's narrative voice and Western phenomenological thought, praising his bold strategy of giving translators creative freedom—an approach Woesler called a "game-changer" for bringing Chinese literature to global readers. Scholars from Uzbekistan, Europe, and China's top universities joined the discussion, reflecting the widening international interest in Xuemo's work.
"The real barrier to cross-cultural understanding is never technique," Xuemo concluded. "It is the depth of our care for life itself." With more than 80 books and translations in 31 languages, Xuemo has become one of China's most translated and internationally recognized living authors. His landmark works—including the Desert Trilogy, Into the Desert, and the monumental eight-volume epic Suosalang—have earned a string of recent international honors, among them the New York City Big Book Award, the International Book Awards, and the International Impact Book Awards (2024–2025).
The conference, organized by the World Association for Chinese Studies, brought together scholars from multiple continents to discuss the role of Chinese culture in a globalized world. Xuemo's keynote, which placed literature at the center of the AI debate, underscored a growing need for humanistic perspectives in technological discourse. As algorithms increasingly mediate human interaction, his message resonates beyond academia, suggesting that the more technology advances, the more the world hungers for stories that speak directly to the shared human condition—across all borders, all languages, and all ages.
For those interested in Xuemo's latest work, his book Eternal Love is available for purchase on Amazon at this link. The growing global readership of Xuemo and the academic recognition he receives point to a counter-intuitive truth in the digital age: literature, with its capacity for empathy and wisdom, remains an essential counterbalance to technological progress.
