Nobel Prize dollars

诺贝尔币 (Nuòbèiěr bì): Nobel Prize dollars

When asked by a Xinhua journalist what he would do with his prize money of RMB7.5 million, recent winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature Mo Yan replied:

I’m getting ready to buy a house in Beijing, a big house. But then I’ve been warned I won’t be able to get anything that big. A house is more than RMB50,000 per square meter, so with RMB 7.5 mil, I can purchase a 120-some square meter home.

我准备在北京买套房子，大房子，后来有人提醒我说也买不了多大的房子，5万多一平米，750万也就是120多平米。

Netizens were stunned that such a huge sum of money meant so little in the terms of Beijing's real estate market. They joked that the Nobel Prize award should become its own denomination of currency—Nobel Prize dollars—the value of which would equal one home in Beijing.

For a sample of netizen reactions, see here.