For a decade Han Han has been in the fast lane - as a rally racing driver, a best-selling author and an immensely popular blogger. Zhou Yunzhe / For China Daily The world's most popular blogger and a rally racing champion, Han Han's controversial image can mask the fact that he is a seriously talented writer, Raymond Zhou offers his appraisal. In what may prove to be a literary masterpiece, An Ideal City contains a scene in which the male protagonist spots a patch of verdant woods from atop an apartment building, but when he tries to reach it he is blocked by a wall that meanders endlessly. He ends up lost in the mist. Like his character, best-selling author Han Han may have found that the visibility of a wall depends on one's point of view. To make matters more complicated, this wall shifts positions. Han is a warrior fighting invisible foes that have visible but mundane facades, but his literary works feature clueless characters who have lost their way in a topsy-turvy world. There are few heroes in his fiction, just victims of their time. That message, obviously, has resonated with tens of millions of readers. Han is the voice of a generation. At 27, he is the most influential person of the 20-something generation in China. He embodies the spirit of the time - an era of constant change and a search for independent identity. Han began his literary life as the little boy who jumped up and down telling everyone the emperor was not wearing any clothes. The "emperor" in this case was China's educational system. By failing most of the courses and dropping out of high school, Han turned his act of defiance into a debut novel, The Triple Gates, which has sold 2 million copies. |