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Love him or hate him, 31-year-old Chinese writer-turned-director Guo Jingming knows how to pack a theater. Tiny Times 3, the third installment in Guo’s popular romantic comedy series, premiered at No. 1 at the Chinese box office on Wednesday, taking in more than 100 million yuan ($16 million). Guo’s movies are all based on his best-selling novels. The Tiny Times series follows the exploits of four female undergrads in Shanghai obsessed with dating, fashion, and shopping. Courtesy Le Vision PicturesIn 2009 he told NPR that the secret to his success was channeling the aspirations and insecurities of his generation: “Before me, Chinese authors were pretty old. And today’s young people don’t understand life depicted by older authors. So they like my work because it’s by a writer their age about stuff very close to their lives.” Guo grew up near the southwestern city of Chongqing, the son of a bank clerk and an engineer in a state-owned enterprise. He attended college in Shanghai, where he became a keen observer of the ways in which money and materialism shape values, ambitions, and the arcs (and dissolutions) of friendships. After the success of his novels made him one of China’s richest authors, he happily flaunted his new wealth, showing up to interviews in Hermès belts and Gucci caps and posting photos of himself decked out in Dolce & Gabbana accessories. His novels and films’ dangling of luxury brands as plot devices—from Louis Vuitton to Dior —marks his oeuvre as a sort of Sex and the City meetsThe Great Gatsby. (F. Scott Fitzgerald was 28 years old when he published his satirical bestseller.) But in Guo’s accounts, there’s no moralizing or condemnation of young people pursuing a luxury lifestyle; nor is he interested in history or politics. | 
