Chinese novelist Mo Yan has been conferred an honorary doctorate by Chile's Diego Portales University earlier this week.

At a conference hosted by the university here on Tuesday, with the theme of "Rivers and my literature," the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature received the highest academic distinction from the university.

In his speech at the event, Mo Yan described the Amazon River as his permanent source of inspiration and said he was deeply influenced by Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquezis.

"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.

Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude," the author's most important book and a Latin American classic, has served as a model, Mo Yan said.

The Chinese writer also received an honorary doctorate from Peru's Pontifical Catholic University late July.