|
Hello, Han Han: You don't know me and I'm not exactly a fan of yours. So, don't throw this letter away as fan mail. I happened to come across Time Asia's recent profile of you. And I read your response in Youth Weekend. I empathize with you. You may have found a way to shake off the shackles you were born with, but you ended up in a trap set up by the Western media. You thought a Time interview would bump up your career another notch. Remember what the New York Times piece did for Guo Jingming? He got the moniker, "China's most successful writer", and what did you get out of the Time deal? You came off as a potty-mouthed, egotistical, effeminate, consumerism-driven brat, the equivalent of a drag queen in the US. But isn't that a portrait you painted of your archrival, Guo Jingming? Well, except for the expletives, which means Guo now has a more unsullied image than you do. You should have picked up a trick or two from Guo and had someone translate a few lines from the Time piece, preferably out of context. The quotes from Ai Weiwei or Zhang Yueran would do fine. Western media tend to duly record the things they like, such as the circulation number for China's "preferred" publications, even though it tends to be laughably inflated. Yet they get into a critical mode when it comes to things that don't fit their nice and nifty framework. Whatever you said was presented in a way that people came away with more misgivings than appreciation. | 
