It is not often that the Nobel Prize in Literature turns a vodka brand owner into a millionaire, but that is what happened in China.
The value of the Chinese vodka brand “Mo Yan Zui” skyrocketed to about $1.6 million after Chinese writer Mo Yan won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Dongfang Weishi television network reported.
The brand name, which translates as “Don’t Say You’re Drunk,” is the creation of Hou Xu Feng, an engineer from Shandong Province who thought up the name while drinking with friends in November 2005.
His friends liked it so much they urged Hou to patent it as a vodka brand, which he did, at a cost of $160.
“To tell the truth, when I registered the trademark several years ago, I really wasn’t thinking about the writer Mo Yan,” Hou said.
“It was pure coincidence,” he said.
After Mo won the Nobel prize the value of the brand name shot up 100,000 percent, even though “Don’t Say You’re Drunk” vodka is not yet being produced.
Hou, who said he always lacked the finances to launch production, has already reached a tentative agreement to sell the brand for $1.6 million, the newspaper Renmin Ribao reported on Tuesday.
Guan Moye, who writes under the pen name Mo Yan, was declared the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature on October 11, 2012.
