Newsmaker

Sweet smell of success for Han Han

By Wang Zhuoqiong (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-17 11:16

Han Han

The 28-year-old, already a top-earning author with 14 books published, is also a champion amateur racecar driver, a social rebel who dropped out from high school and a wildly popular blogger. Indeed, his blog has registered more than 200 million hits since it began in 2006, making it one of the most popular blog in the world.

Time magazine said Han, the son of a Shanghai newspaper editor, is widely seen as "a torchbearer for the generation born after the beginning of the country's opening to the outside world, a group the Chinese call the 'post-80s' generation': apolitical, money- and status-obsessed children of the country's explosive economic boom".

Han has kept a low profile about Party's publication, giving no press conferences or media interviews.

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On his blog, Han wrote: "Although writers have produced articles of great quality, it is, after all, a cultural book. It cannot carry the expectation from the people who want to change and improve the society. The change comes from oneself."

An audience will be surely disappointed if they watch an art movie, expecting a warfare epic, he said.

The magazine's Chinese name Duchangtuan means solo choir. But its content is not from just one writer, but contributions from well-known individuals including a TV anchor, a singer and an Internet celebrity.

"The success of the magazine depends on whether the content can be maintained such a level," said Yang Wenxuan, an editor from Tianjin Books.