Mo Yan was congratulated for his Nobel Literature Prize win by prominent authors in his home country - but some on social networking sites criticised the prize, saying that Yan did not deserve to win.
Mo, whose pen name means 'don't speak' in Chinese, is the first Chinese national to win the Nobel prize in literature in its century-long history.
Er Yue He, a renowned Chinese author told Shanghai Daily: "He definitely deserves the prize. It is an affirmation for Chinese literature on the world stage."
Mo Yan, the Nobel Prize winner, pictured at a bookshop in China
Wang Anyi, president of Shanghai Writers' Association, said she was thrilled for Mo, and sent her congratulations.
Others took to Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter, to express their delight at the prize. The Nobel Prize had been the top trending topic on Weibo in the hours leading up to the announcement.
The build-up was marked with traditional Chinese pessimism, with 8,000 people voting in a Chinese poll believing Mo would take the prize, but three times as many voting that he would not.
Sales of Mo's works have shot up, and his novel Frog, which earned him China's most prestigious award for literature, the Mao Dun Literature Prize, is out of stock on Dangdang.com, the country's leading online book shop.
Many other Chinese celebrities expressed congratulations on Weibo, and posted pictures of themselves with the author, and pictures of his autograph.
But on the blog, Off Beat China, bloggers expressed their hope that Mo would not win the prize, and saying it was usually only awarded to citizens for being "anti-China".
Blogger Alia posted: "Nobel Prizes in sciences aren’t really relevant for China for now. Nobel Peace Prize is probably the only relevant so far, but it’s the so-called “anti-China” Nobel Prize. Dalai Lama, who is labeled as the evil separatist, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
"Liu Xiaobo, who has been sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment for “inciting subversion of state power,” received his 2010 Nobel Peace Prize while still in China’s prison. These are not really cases to be proud of for the Chinese people.
"Shouldn’t Chinese citizens be happy? Well…many are not."
Many posted on Weibo that Mo was the Chinese Communist Party's "baby".
Teng Biao posted on Weibo: "He once said that there were no restrictions or censorship on novelists in China. At Frankfurt Book Fair, he refused to sit in the same seminar with [dissident Chinese authors] Dai Qing and Bei Ling.
"When he was asked about opinions on [Chinese dissident] Liu Xiaobo’s 11-year sentence, he said he didn’t know much about it and had nothing to say.”
Baoqing Guy tweeted on Weibo: “The moment when Mo Yan started to copy Mao’s Yan’an Talks by hand, the writer in him died.”
Others simply said that Mo was not the best author China had to offer
Wind Dasheng wrote: “If any Chinese writer deserves a Nobel Prize for Literature, it won’t be Mo Yan. Writers like Yu Hua, Jia Pingwa and Wang Shuo are all way better than him.”
How Twitter reacted to the news:
