POLICE detective Cao Naiqian began writing his first novel at the age of 37, all because of a dare. It was a bright spring afternoon 26 years ago that a friend came to visit and was amazed by Cao's collection of more than 2,000 foreign and Chinese novels, neatly stacked in floor-to-ceiling cabinets.

"I'll bet there's one book you don't have," his friend said. "I don't know the title but the author is Cao Naiqian."

How difficult could that be? Thought the cop in Datong, an industrial city in northern China's Shanxi Province. "I can write a story right away." He took the bait and three months later, he finished his first novel, "Shanyuan Monk and I." Anything but a crime novel, it was the true story of his childhood friendship with a solitary and eccentric monk named Cifa (Shanyan in the novel) living in the Buddhist temple where ordinary people had been relocated in an effort to dilute the effects of religion. From the monk Cao learned about Chinese poetry and philosophy, meditation, calligraphy, and how to play weiqi or Chinese board game go. The monk suffered during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) and one day hanged himself.

A condensed version was published in a literary magazine in Datong. It has been renamed "The Solitude of the Buddha" in his latest collection of six books released this October.

After writing that novel in 1986, policeman Cao didn't stop writing, mostly about harsh, shockingly brutal, rural life in the coal-rich province. He writes in dialect, and his style is described as minimalist and austere, with visceral punch. There are some beautiful childhood scenes, but he also writes about painful subjects, including desperate crime and vice, suicide, mental illness, incest, adultery, bestiality, and various sexual arrangements. But his themes are the struggle for survival, for food, sex and respect - basic human motivations.

Now 63, the low-profile, somewhat rustic writer in Datong has published more than 50 novels. Two-thirds of them have been translated into English, Japanese, German, French and Swedish.

Because of several strokes, he isn't writing these days but was in Shanghai in late October for the launch of his collected works. He spoke to Shanghai Daily and also answered questions by e-mail.

This year's winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Mo Yan, also writes in blunt language about rural life from his own experience. But Cao is not well known at home. Chinese critics, while acknowledging its power, generally consider his writing to be rougher and less sophisticated than Mo's; the narratives, some say, are too-simple and lack depth.

But Wang Anyi, author of "The Song of Everlasting Sorrow" (1995), said of Cao's works: "The novels are so terse, delicate and flawless, blatant and plain but implicit and reserved." Noted author Wang Zengqi (1920-97) once said Cao's stories "have a strong aroma of youmian," the raw oat dough used to make noodles and bread staples in northern China.

In April, it was rumored that Cao was among 20 writers short-listed for the Nobel Prize for Literature, along with Mo. Reporters flocked to Cao who told them, "God laughs at the sight of man thinking," quoting a famous Jewish proverb. "My attitude is: Not to think about it, nor talk about it; Not to take it seriously nor take a stand."

Foreign critics and translators praise his work for skillful use of dialect, austere lyricism, and unsparing description of raw human nature. They also praise his economy of language in which every word counts, as in poetry - take one word away and the whole piece falls apart.

Swedish sinologist and translator Goran Malmqvist, one of 18 lifelong judges of the Nobel Prize for Literature, calls Cao "a true xiangbalao" (country person) and rates him alongside Mo Yan, Su Tong and other highly regarded writers. Malmqvist translated Cao's series of short novels "There's Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night" (2007) into Swedish. It's also called "Wenjiayao" or "Tales of the Wen Clan Cave Dwellers," referring to an impoverished village of cave dwellings in Shanxi Province. It's set during the "cultural revolution" but transcends that period and is apolitical, its characters behaving as they would in any place or time.

"Cao's straightforward touch of the dark side of the society and barbarity of human nature makes him marginalized in the circle of China's contemporary literature. I see him as a bit of an outsider," said American John Balcom, who translated the renowned "Wenjiayao" series into English. He described Cao's works at length in a 2009 interview with Public Radio International.

The latest collection of works includes the renowned "Wenjiayao" series written over 10 years (1988-98), three collected short novels, and "Huan Mei" (2012), a long, semi-biographical novel about his foster mother who abducted him from his birth mother when he was seven months old. The collection includes Cao's letters to Malmqvist explaining dialects, culture and customs.

True to his roots

"All my stories come from my true experience. I like to write about the nobodies in my experience who feel helpless about real (terrible) things that happen to them, things that are often ignored by others and things they feel helpless about," Cao said in a Shanxi accent.

Today, Cao's hearing is poor and he responds slowly, saying he doesn't speak well enough to introduce his works.

"A painful idea runs through his stories - helplessness," wrote author Wang Zengqi in an introduction to the "Wenjiayao" series of 29 short novels and a short story about poor men and toughs in the destitute village. Their primary compulsions are food and sex. One poor single man is secretly in love with a girl, but has no money to marry her. Sexual repression sometimes drives him to distraction.

The stories are based on Cao's own experience in a Shanxi village named Beiwenyao in 1973 and 1974 when he led a team of zhiqing (urban youth) for re-education in the countryside during the "cultural revolution."

The most memorable events for Cao were the dapinghua, Shanxi dialect for potluck dinners, in which everyone brought a dish. Cao dined and drank regularly with locals. After several cups, they all started to sing yaofandiao, or popular beggars' songs.

"I don't know if there are any other lyrics that could be so heartbreaking," Cao said.

One example:

I can't pick up a needle when I think of you early in the morning;

I can't blow out the light when I think of you late at night;

I look for dusk when I think of you early in the morning;

I look for daybreak when I think of you late at night;

I climb atop the wall when I think of you early in the morning;

There's nothing I can do when I think of you late at night;

Late at night I bury my head in a pillow when I think of you;

I bite my lips and find my mouth full of grain husks.

Each short novel in his "Wenjiayao" series is both a stand-alone and interlocking chapter. In 2005 the novel was published in Taiwan. The next year, Malmqvist's Swedish translation was published. The English translation by John Balcom was published in 2009; it hit the Chinese mainland market in 2007.

"I wrote the stories because I love those people who live in the bottom of society and care about them. I want to let people know, even after 100 or 1,000 years, what kind of life those people once led," Cao said in a 2007 newspaper interview.

He stays in contact with some characters in his series and used to return from time to time, once going back with Malmqvist to sing beggar songs and eat deep-fried millet cakes. Cao even bought the cave dwelling where he lived long ago.

"I care about hungry peasants because I was born in a peasants' family, I have peasants' blood in my veins. I think as a peasant and I behave like a peasant. I'm a peasant in police uniform," Cao wrote in his preface to the Taiwan edition.

Strong women

In Cao Naiqian's stories, the most admirable figures are usually women, Malmqvist observes. Cao agrees. "I understand very well a mother's big heart and deep love for her children," he told Shanghai Daily.

In 1949, Cao was born in a remote village in Yingxian County in Shanxi Province, around 200km from the provincial capital of Taiyuan. When he was seven months old, he was abducted by the childless next door neighbor Huan Mei, who was unable to bear children.

Carrying the baby on her back, the kidnapper waded across the flooded Sangkan River, beat off a hungry wolf with an iron rod and ran north to find her husband in Datong City, 80km from Yingxian County. She couldn't find him for a while because he was working undercover for the Communist Party of China and had changed his name.

Huan Mei, who was illiterate, had no food and no money and begged on the street. Cao chokes up when he recalls what she went through.

Eventually she found her husband and they all lived in Datong. In a complicated tale, Cao's birth father and stepfather were related and after his birth mother died when Cao was two, the families kept in touch and children from both families played.

Though Cao was never told of his birth mother, he figured out the truth when he was 13. He never resented the abductor he had learned to love as his mother. "She's selfish but a great mother, whatever she does, she does for her son," Cao told Shanghai Daily.

One day 81-year-old Huan Mei, who was suffering from Alzheimer's, rushed outside with two meat cleavers to save her son whom she believed was attacked by hooligans. Surrounded by jeering beggars, the distraught woman was stranded in onrushing traffic and picked up by police.

"I will never forget the terrified and overjoyed expressions on her face when I collected her at the police station," Cao recalled.

In 1996, when he was 47, Cao dropped everything and tended to his ailing stepmother until she died. He then began to write about her. "Huan Mei" was the result. While writing he often burst into tears and had to stop because doctors warned he could suffer another stroke.

"I couldn't afford to be stuck in bed. Finishing the story about my mother was my life's task," Cao wrote in his recent "Wenjiayao Letters." (2012)

Cao may be a rustic, but he grew up listening to his foster father, once a private school teacher, tell stories from "The Romance of Three Kingdoms," "Water Margin" and other Chinese classics. His friend Monk Cifa also taught him about Chinese culture. When he was 14, he read "Jane Eyre," his first foreign novel, and became enamored with foreign fiction. Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck and Chekov were especially influential, he said.

He learned to play traditional instruments, such as the xiao or vertical bamboo flute, the erhu, a two-stringed bowed fiddle, and the sanxian, a three-stringed plucked instrument. Cao used to carry his xiao everywhere and liked to sing beggars' songs as he wandered in vast fields and rugged countryside.

After graduating from high school in 1968, he worked as a coal miner and then played musical instruments in an art troupe attached to the coal mining bureau. He was expelled after he got into a furious political dispute with the leader over whether a classic erhu song was treasonous. Cao insisted it wasn't, burned all the scores in front of the troupe and stormed out.

In 1972 he became a policeman in Datong, wearing the uniform for 37 years, working in various posts and finally criminal investigation. Police work was far from his main inspiration, he said, but it offered opportunities to observe human behavior.

"The Day of the Jackal" in his book "The Last Village" (2007) tells the true story of a malicious killer who reveals his deep and admirable love of his grandfather. "At that moment, I realized that sometimes evil, goodness, turpitude and greatness can co-exist in the heart of the same person," Cao recalled in an interview with a Chongqing newspaper.

For Cao, writing is a very intimate process that he always shields from others, in the past pretending he was writing police cases summaries. Often his wife and police colleagues were surprised to find him weeping over case work.

What critics say

Swedish sinologist and translator Goran Malmqvist wrote in his preface to Cao Naiqian's "Wenjiayao" series in 2007: "I can hardly understand why literature critics on the Chinese mainland haven't paid enough attention to Cao Naiqian's works."

In apparent reaction, nine critics appraised Cao's works. Some praised his unique style of storytelling and use of local dialect and folk music, such as beggars' songs, in depicting gritty rural life

Some called him repetitious and his body of work showed little evolution. Peking University professor Shao Yanjun said the first few stories make a strong impression, but she later got bored.

The blunt storytelling is considered by some to be too simple, too linear, without much plot, foreshadowing, twists and turns.

"His works lack depths," said Shao, adding that Cao only describes the fact of poverty but does not explore the reasons.

Cao ignores the critics and once compared them with annoying "tit birds," pecking away at a farmer because they don't like his crops.

"To be a brilliant writer, you have to learn to be simple," he wrote in a 2007 blog. "Touching details are mellow beer, while attractive language is savory dishes. Without these two, don't think of befuddling readers with a novel," he wrote in another blog. "Plots can attract people, but what really touches and echoes are details. The best plots will finally be forgotten, but brilliant details will always remain."

"Because of my strokes, I take doctors' advice and stop writing, but if my health permits, I will continue writing in my own way," Cao tells Shanghai Daily by e-mail.

"I believe the book that satisfies every one hasn't been written yet and the writer who satisfies everyone hasn't been born," he added.

The novels are so terse, delicate and flawless, blatant and plain but implicit and reserved." - Wang Anyi, author of "The Song of Everlasting Sorrow" (1995)

Cao Naiqian carries forward the tradition of Chinese novels created by Shen Congwen and Wang Zengqi, focusing on local features and describing the helplessness of humble nobodies, which shows the significant power of the novel." - Chu Anmin, Taiwan literary editor