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 by the magical realism of such a huge sum of money meaning so little in the Beijing 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.