While the river behind his childhood home has run dry, said Mo Yan, he can always rely on the abundant waters of the Amazon for inspiration.

"I will simply imagine that the Amazon is my river, the river of my childhood. It will give me inspiration, guidance and confidence, as many readers do," he said.

At the conference, Mo Yan was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Diego Portales University, the highest academic distinction from the university.

The Chinese writer will be traveling to other cities, following his visit to Santiago.

Mo Yan was born in 1955 and grew up in Shandong province in eastern China.

In awarding him the Nobel Prize, the judges described him as a writer "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary".