Celebrated Chinese writer Yu Hua started anew at Beijing Normal University. The writer of To Live and Brothers was named writer-on-campus by the university's International Writing Center on Friday.

Yu received the certificate from peer writer Mo Yan, who is also director of the center. Last year Jia Pingwa was the first to receive the title from the campus.

"I will spend more time exchanging with the students here," Yu said.

Yu's first work was published 30 years ago. His works are popular among different generations of readers, and successful adaptations have been made into film (by director Zhang Yimou) and drama.

Born in 1960 in Zhejiang province, Yu earned a master's degree in the 1980s at Beijing Normal University, where he shared a dormitory for two years with Mo Yan.

"I know all of Mo Yan's little secrets, he knows mine, but we won't tell," Yu joked.

At the symposium in Beijing on Friday, Yu's former teacher Tong Qingbing showed Yu's master's thesis, which was about how literature reflects reality.

"Yu has a wide mind that enables him to tell real feelings from his heart," Tong said.

Hailed by writer Lao Ma as a monument of contemporary Chinese literature, Yu is listed second as an internationally accepted writer by the Chinese Writers Association. The first is Mo Yan, said Bai Ye, veteran literary critic.

"He is able to write about historical and social changes through the perspectives of ordinary people," Bai said.

Critic Zhang Ning believes Yu is a born storyteller, "he seems to write at his will and he enjoys that free mind, but he retains his wisdom and wit in writing."

meijia@chinadaily.com.cn