周六人物：偶像博主韩寒挑战中国领导
译文：纽约时报：周六人物：偶像博主韩寒挑战中国领导
作者：ANDREW JACOBS
发布时 间：2010/03/12
译 者：@foodpizza
校对：Ben
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]
Shiho Fukada为 The New York Times摄[/FONT]
韩寒：“当局想要让中国成为一个文化大国，但是我们的领导人却是如此的没文化。”
想成为韩寒那颗绝非易事，他是一个魅力四射的拉力车手还是一个流行的小说作家，他还是中国点击量最大的博客的博主。
他想要不引人注目的出行几乎不可能。当地官员们时常要为他们最新的蠢事争取他的肯定。（他都礼貌地回绝了。）年轻寂寞的女孩经常在他拉力 比赛后拿着有他名字的信接近他。（他说这些女孩是被冒用了他身份的骗子们欺骗了。）
但是韩少最棘手的问题来自更难对付 的对手：看不见的审查人员删除了他们认为不合适的内容，而文化警察让他的杂志迟迟不能出版，《独唱团》，这是一本集合了各种争议性的文章和照片的杂志。他 耸了耸肩，并带着他标志性的咧嘴坏笑说到：“当局想要让中国成为一个文化大国，但是我们的领导人却是如此的没文化。”“如果事情继续像这样发展，中国将会 只因为茶叶和熊猫而为世人所知。”
自从他2006年开博以来，韩少不断发表日益犀利的评论文批评中国的领导层以及那些他认为正在给那些不 幸不属于政府内部的民众带来痛苦的政策 。他的博客已有3亿的点击量，这可能使他成为了这个世界上活着的最受欢迎的作家。
近日在他上海的 办公室里接受的采访中，他把共产党的官员形容为是“无能的”和经常大放厥词的，但是他用了十分巧妙的语言来解释两者之间的关系， “他们和我们是完全不同的生物 ，”他说。 “他们和我们唯一的共同点就是都有一个20多岁的女友，当然了，他们是包养小三。”
韩少自从 他19岁发布第一本小说之后就享有盛名 ，但是在最近几个月中他的知名度因为他发表的那些引领这代人思潮的博文而像气球般膨胀，他的这代人也就是所谓邓小平施行改革开放后的80后。
80 后因为中国的计划生育政策而普遍都是独生子女，也都是自己独自成长的。 不论真假，这代人都有着被宠坏而且没耐心的名声，还有就是他们对官媒灌输的思想接受的更少。
每次当韩少想要说点什么尖刻的话语的时候，那 他就会小心的通过反讽和幽默来间接的传递他对腐败、审查制度和每天发生的不公之事来表达意见。
在最近关于拆迁最后都以暴力或是强制迁移而 结尾的博文中，他建议政府政府应该建立监狱来作为公共住房。这样才会实现双赢，他进一步解释道：这样租客们就不会发出反对之声，而那些想要提出不同意见的 把他们锁在自己的屋子里就好了。
他最近的计划是举办一个挖苦春晚播出的说唱歌曲《党的政策亚克西》的比赛，谁写出来好的歌词就会奖给他/ 她5000 元人民币。
这个在中国全国性的广播公司上播放，而且估计有4亿人收看的表演展示了欢乐的少数民族维吾尔族民众对共产党政策的 称赞。
这些（歌曲里唱的政策）不是广大维族人民视为压迫，并可能是去年夏天在西部省份新疆引起暴动的政策，而是减少农业税，增加医疗保险 ，而且 根据买买提大叔的说法：（这些政策）让他货巾里塞满了人民币。
尽管游戏时候他的文章会被“和谐掉”—— 一种流行的指代审查制度的说法—— 但是他的博客还在中国几个最大的门户网站之一上继续得以生存。冉云飞，一位四川省的作家、博客撰写者说因为韩少是名人所以避免了这种（被和谐）情况，还有 就是他不写最敏感的政治话题。
“他用幽默和智慧来嘲笑他看到的不公平”，冉匪说，他自己的博客已经被大陆屏蔽了，只能翻墙浏览。“也许韩 寒被允许发声是因为他不直接点出姓名，而且也不会直击中国最敏感的话题——共党的一党专制。”
韩寒另一张王牌就是他在经济上独立自主。因 为他出了14本书还是一位成功的拉力车手，他就不会害怕其他很多学者或记者所面临的压力——一旦言论越过看不见的红线，就会丢掉工作。
但 是政府最近找到一种让韩寒愤怒的方法——不让他的杂志出版。韩少说不让出版最主要的原因来自一篇有详细的惹怒了当局的作家黑名单。当被问到如果他的努力白 费了或是博客被完全关闭了他怎么办的时候，韩少笑了笑然后面无表情的给出了标志性的讽刺 。“我会成为一个更好的车手。”他说。
韩寒从他 高中辍学之后已经改变了很多，还成了中国最知名的作家之一。他的第一部小说《三重门》写出青春期少年在家庭与学校的压力下枯萎的故事。这本书获得了两百万 的销量，它是过去二十年最畅销的书 。
小说中的男主人公和接下来几部作品中的男主角就像韩寒自己一样，成长在小市民家庭中，还都藐视权 威，特别是老师，他们 被韩少比喻成娼妓。
韩寒说他的父母在他成长中给了他一个广阔的维度。他的父亲是一位当地党报的头版编辑，他的妈妈 在社会服务中心工作。“我的妈妈给了一颗让我欣赏失败者的心，”他说。
他家的屋子里满是书籍 ，他说，而且他的爸爸确保那些真正的好书——在共产革命之前出版的书籍——放在能够让8岁的他拿到的低处。“他把所有的中华人民共和国成立之后出版的粗制 滥造的书籍都放的很高让我够不到，”韩少如是说。
当他反当局的写作开始影响他父母在国营机构的工作的时候，韩少鼓励他们早点退休，然后他 来养活他们。
曾经韩寒被评论家们认为是易怒和难以控制的，现今他超越了感性层面来抨击诗人、明星和友邻博主们。这些日子他的注意力主要放 在了社会的深层问题上：民族主义的波涛汹涌；当代文化的暗淡无光；以及高不可攀的房价让新生的中国中产阶级终日处在焦虑之中。
他把高房价 问题归罪于当地政府，他们把土地卖给出价最高的竞标者以努力保持两位数的经济增长率来取悦中央政府。这带来的高财产价值 ，他补充到，用来给似乎是与生俱来的官僚们买晚餐和那些奢侈的礼物了。
冷冰冰的后果便是年轻的职员日以继夜的工作，还被偿还房贷搞的心烦 意乱，这样他们就没有时间去关心是什么使中国的处境如此不堪。“政府乐于看到房价上涨，人们被逼去买他们买不起的房产 ，最后在恐惧中结束一生。”然后他微笑着补充道，“这是个完美的局面 ，对吧？”
除去这些讽刺和抱怨，韩少内心还是很乐观的。因特网，他 说，会最终推动中国更加开放。没有任何 审查大军能完全限制自由的言论表达。“我认为政府对引入互联网十分后悔，”他顿了一下，说。 “最早的时候，他们认为互联网像报纸或是电视一样——只是另一种传达他们思想的方式。他们没意识到人们会写出和说出自己的想法。这让他们大为头疼。”
Saturday Profile
Heartthrob’s Blog Challenges China’s Leaders
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
“The government wants China to become a great cultural nation, but our leaders are so uncultured.” Han Han
By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: March 12, 2010
SHANGHAI
IT’S not so easy being Han Han, the heartthrob race car driver and pop novelist who just happens to be China’s most widely read blogger.
Traveling incognito is all but impossible. Local officials frequently vie for his endorsement of their latest architectural boondoggles. (He politely declines.) And love-lorn young women often approach him after races with letters bearing his name. (He says the women have been duped by impostors who have assumed his identity.)
But Mr. Han’s most vexing challenge comes from a more formidable nemesis: the unseen censors who delete blog posts they deem objectionable and the publishing police who have held up the release of his new magazine, “A Chorus of Solos,” a provocative collection of essays and photographs. “The government wants China to become a great cultural nation, but our leaders are so uncultured,” he said with a shrug, offering his characteristic Cheshire-cat grin. “If things continue like this, China will only be known for tea and pandas.”
Since he began blogging in 2006, Mr. Han, 28, has been delivering increasingly caustic attacks on China’s leadership and the policies he contends are creating misery for those unlucky enough to lack a powerful government post. With more than 300 million hits to his blog, he may be the most popular living writer in the world.
In a recent interview at his office in Shanghai, he described party officials as “useless” and prone to spouting nonsense, although he used more delicate language to dismiss their relevance. “Their lives are nothing like ours,” he said. “The only thing they have in common with young people is that like us, they too have girlfriends in their 20s, although theirs are on the side.”
Mr. Han has enjoyed widespread fame since he published his first novel at 19, but his popularity has ballooned in recent months through blog posts that seem to capture the zeitgeist of his peers, the so-called post-80s generation born after the economic reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping.
Theirs is a generation of only children, the result of China’s one-child policy, and one that has known only uninterrupted growth. Whether true or not, it is also a demographic with a reputation for being spoiled, impatient and less accepting of the storyline fed to them by government-run media.
If Mr. Han’s tongue is sharp, he is careful to deliver his barbs through sarcasm and humorous anecdotes that obliquely take on corruption, censorship and everyday injustice
In one recent post about redevelopment projects that often end in violence and forced evictions, he suggested that the government build public housing in the form of prisons. The benefits would be twofold, he explained: Tenants could make no claim on the apartments and those who make a fuss could simply be locked up in their homes.
His current gambit is a wryly subversive competition that will award $730 to the person who comes up with new lyrics to a song-and-dance routine that was broadcast last month during the reliably soporific Chinese New Year television gala.
The performance, staged by China’s national broadcaster and viewed by an estimated 400 million people, featured merry members of the Uighur minority belting out praise for Communist Party policies.
These were not the policies that many Uighurs bemoan as oppressive — and which may or may not have provoked the deadly riots in the western region of Xinjiang last summer — but ones that supposedly reduced taxes, increased health benefits and according to the singing farmer Maimaiti, filled his donkey sack with cash.
ALTHOUGH his posts are sometimes “harmonized” — a popular euphemism for censorship —his blog, published by one of China’s most popular Web portals, has so far been allowed to continue. Ran Yunfei, a writer and blogger in Sichuan Province, says that Mr. Han is partly insulated by his celebrity, but also by his avoidance of the most politically charged topics.
“He uses humor and wit to laugh at the injustices he sees,” said Mr. Ran, whose own blog is blocked in China and available only to those with the technical means to hop over the Great Firewall. “Perhaps the reason he’s tolerated is because he does not name names directly and he doesn’t go after the heart of the problem, which is China’s one-party dictatorship.”
His other trump card is his financial independence. With 14 books to his name and a successful career as a race car driver, he is not susceptible to pressures that constrain other critics, many of them academics or journalists whose jobs tend to evaporate when their public musings cross an invisible line.
But the government has lately found a way to pique him by holding up the release of his magazine. Mr. Han said the main objection appears to be an article that details the blacklisting of actors who have angered the authorities. Asked what he will do if his endeavor is thwarted, or if one day his blog is banned entirely, Mr. Han smiles and offers trademark sarcasm, delivered deadpan. “I’ll just become a better driver,” he said.
MR. Han has been reinventing himself since he dropped out of high school and promptly went on to become one of China’s best known writers. His first novel, “Triple Door,” plumbed the adolescent angst of those withering under the pressures of family and school. With two million copies in print, it is the best-selling book of the last 20 years.
The protagonists in that novel and several that followed were young men like himself, raised in small rural townships and disdaining authority, especially teachers, whom Mr. Han sometimes likens to prostitutes.
Growing up, Mr. Han says he was given wide latitude by his parents. His father was the front-page editor of a local party newspaper and his mother worked for a social service bureau helping the needy. “My mom gave me an appreciation for the underdog,” he said.
His family’s home was packed with literature, he said, and his father made sure to put the good stuff — books published before the Communist revolution — low enough for an 8-year-old to reach. “He put all the poorly written books published after the founding of the People’s Republic of China high enough so I couldn’t reach it,” Mr. Han said.
When his anti-establishment writings began to affect his parents’ state-run jobs, Mr. Han encouraged them to retire early, offering to support them financially.
Once viewed by critics as petulant and self-consciously rebellious, Mr. Han has moved beyond ad hominem attacks on poets, pop stars and fellow bloggers. These days his attention is largely drawn to society’s deeper problems: a surge in nationalism; the lackluster quality of contemporary culture; and the albatross of sky-high real-estate prices that keep China’s nascent middle-class in a constant state of anxiety.
He blames the high prices on local officials, who sell off land to the highest bidder in an effort to finance public works and pump up the double-digit economic growth figures that keep Beijing happy. High property values, he adds, also pay for all those dinners and fancy gifts that seem to be the birthright of officialdom.
The grim result is a country of young professionals so overworked and distracted by mortgage payments that they have no time to care about what ails China. “The government is happy to see prices go up, people are forced to buy property they can’t afford and they end up living in fear.” Then he smiles and adds, “It’s a perfect situation, right?”
Despite the sarcasm and griping, Mr. Han is an optimist at heart. The Internet, he says, will eventually prod China toward greater openness. No army of censors can completely constrain free expression. “I think the government really regrets the Internet,” he said, pausing for effect. “Originally, they thought it would be like the newspaper or the television — just another way to get their view out to the people. What they didn’t realize is that people can type and talk back. This is giving them a really big headache.”
译文：纽约时报：周六人物：偶像博主韩寒挑战中国领导
作者：ANDREW JACOBS
发布时 间：2010/03/12
译 者：@foodpizza
校对：Ben
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]
Shiho Fukada为 The New York Times摄[/FONT]
韩寒：“当局想要让中国成为一个文化大国，但是我们的领导人却是如此的没文化。”
想成为韩寒那颗绝非易事，他是一个魅力四射的拉力车手还是一个流行的小说作家，他还是中国点击量最大的博客的博主。
他想要不引人注目的出行几乎不可能。当地官员们时常要为他们最新的蠢事争取他的肯定。（他都礼貌地回绝了。）年轻寂寞的女孩经常在他拉力 比赛后拿着有他名字的信接近他。（他说这些女孩是被冒用了他身份的骗子们欺骗了。）
但是韩少最棘手的问题来自更难对付 的对手：看不见的审查人员删除了他们认为不合适的内容，而文化警察让他的杂志迟迟不能出版，《独唱团》，这是一本集合了各种争议性的文章和照片的杂志。他 耸了耸肩，并带着他标志性的咧嘴坏笑说到：“当局想要让中国成为一个文化大国，但是我们的领导人却是如此的没文化。”“如果事情继续像这样发展，中国将会 只因为茶叶和熊猫而为世人所知。”
自从他2006年开博以来，韩少不断发表日益犀利的评论文批评中国的领导层以及那些他认为正在给那些不 幸不属于政府内部的民众带来痛苦的政策 。他的博客已有3亿的点击量，这可能使他成为了这个世界上活着的最受欢迎的作家。
近日在他上海的 办公室里接受的采访中，他把共产党的官员形容为是“无能的”和经常大放厥词的，但是他用了十分巧妙的语言来解释两者之间的关系， “他们和我们是完全不同的生物 ，”他说。 “他们和我们唯一的共同点就是都有一个20多岁的女友，当然了，他们是包养小三。”
韩少自从 他19岁发布第一本小说之后就享有盛名 ，但是在最近几个月中他的知名度因为他发表的那些引领这代人思潮的博文而像气球般膨胀，他的这代人也就是所谓邓小平施行改革开放后的80后。
80 后因为中国的计划生育政策而普遍都是独生子女，也都是自己独自成长的。 不论真假，这代人都有着被宠坏而且没耐心的名声，还有就是他们对官媒灌输的思想接受的更少。
每次当韩少想要说点什么尖刻的话语的时候，那 他就会小心的通过反讽和幽默来间接的传递他对腐败、审查制度和每天发生的不公之事来表达意见。
在最近关于拆迁最后都以暴力或是强制迁移而 结尾的博文中，他建议政府政府应该建立监狱来作为公共住房。这样才会实现双赢，他进一步解释道：这样租客们就不会发出反对之声，而那些想要提出不同意见的 把他们锁在自己的屋子里就好了。
他最近的计划是举办一个挖苦春晚播出的说唱歌曲《党的政策亚克西》的比赛，谁写出来好的歌词就会奖给他/ 她5000 元人民币。
这个在中国全国性的广播公司上播放，而且估计有4亿人收看的表演展示了欢乐的少数民族维吾尔族民众对共产党政策的 称赞。
这些（歌曲里唱的政策）不是广大维族人民视为压迫，并可能是去年夏天在西部省份新疆引起暴动的政策，而是减少农业税，增加医疗保险 ，而且 根据买买提大叔的说法：（这些政策）让他货巾里塞满了人民币。
尽管游戏时候他的文章会被“和谐掉”—— 一种流行的指代审查制度的说法—— 但是他的博客还在中国几个最大的门户网站之一上继续得以生存。冉云飞，一位四川省的作家、博客撰写者说因为韩少是名人所以避免了这种（被和谐）情况，还有 就是他不写最敏感的政治话题。
“他用幽默和智慧来嘲笑他看到的不公平”，冉匪说，他自己的博客已经被大陆屏蔽了，只能翻墙浏览。“也许韩 寒被允许发声是因为他不直接点出姓名，而且也不会直击中国最敏感的话题——共党的一党专制。”
韩寒另一张王牌就是他在经济上独立自主。因 为他出了14本书还是一位成功的拉力车手，他就不会害怕其他很多学者或记者所面临的压力——一旦言论越过看不见的红线，就会丢掉工作。
但 是政府最近找到一种让韩寒愤怒的方法——不让他的杂志出版。韩少说不让出版最主要的原因来自一篇有详细的惹怒了当局的作家黑名单。当被问到如果他的努力白 费了或是博客被完全关闭了他怎么办的时候，韩少笑了笑然后面无表情的给出了标志性的讽刺 。“我会成为一个更好的车手。”他说。
韩寒从他 高中辍学之后已经改变了很多，还成了中国最知名的作家之一。他的第一部小说《三重门》写出青春期少年在家庭与学校的压力下枯萎的故事。这本书获得了两百万 的销量，它是过去二十年最畅销的书 。
小说中的男主人公和接下来几部作品中的男主角就像韩寒自己一样，成长在小市民家庭中，还都藐视权 威，特别是老师，他们 被韩少比喻成娼妓。
韩寒说他的父母在他成长中给了他一个广阔的维度。他的父亲是一位当地党报的头版编辑，他的妈妈 在社会服务中心工作。“我的妈妈给了一颗让我欣赏失败者的心，”他说。
他家的屋子里满是书籍 ，他说，而且他的爸爸确保那些真正的好书——在共产革命之前出版的书籍——放在能够让8岁的他拿到的低处。“他把所有的中华人民共和国成立之后出版的粗制 滥造的书籍都放的很高让我够不到，”韩少如是说。
当他反当局的写作开始影响他父母在国营机构的工作的时候，韩少鼓励他们早点退休，然后他 来养活他们。
曾经韩寒被评论家们认为是易怒和难以控制的，现今他超越了感性层面来抨击诗人、明星和友邻博主们。这些日子他的注意力主要放 在了社会的深层问题上：民族主义的波涛汹涌；当代文化的暗淡无光；以及高不可攀的房价让新生的中国中产阶级终日处在焦虑之中。
他把高房价 问题归罪于当地政府，他们把土地卖给出价最高的竞标者以努力保持两位数的经济增长率来取悦中央政府。这带来的高财产价值 ，他补充到，用来给似乎是与生俱来的官僚们买晚餐和那些奢侈的礼物了。
冷冰冰的后果便是年轻的职员日以继夜的工作，还被偿还房贷搞的心烦 意乱，这样他们就没有时间去关心是什么使中国的处境如此不堪。“政府乐于看到房价上涨，人们被逼去买他们买不起的房产 ，最后在恐惧中结束一生。”然后他微笑着补充道，“这是个完美的局面 ，对吧？”
除去这些讽刺和抱怨，韩少内心还是很乐观的。因特网，他 说，会最终推动中国更加开放。没有任何 审查大军能完全限制自由的言论表达。“我认为政府对引入互联网十分后悔，”他顿了一下，说。 “最早的时候，他们认为互联网像报纸或是电视一样——只是另一种传达他们思想的方式。他们没意识到人们会写出和说出自己的想法。这让他们大为头疼。”
Saturday Profile
Heartthrob’s Blog Challenges China’s Leaders
“The government wants China to become a great cultural nation, but our leaders are so uncultured.” Han Han
By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: March 12, 2010
SHANGHAI
IT’S not so easy being Han Han, the heartthrob race car driver and pop novelist who just happens to be China’s most widely read blogger.
Traveling incognito is all but impossible. Local officials frequently vie for his endorsement of their latest architectural boondoggles. (He politely declines.) And love-lorn young women often approach him after races with letters bearing his name. (He says the women have been duped by impostors who have assumed his identity.)
But Mr. Han’s most vexing challenge comes from a more formidable nemesis: the unseen censors who delete blog posts they deem objectionable and the publishing police who have held up the release of his new magazine, “A Chorus of Solos,” a provocative collection of essays and photographs. “The government wants China to become a great cultural nation, but our leaders are so uncultured,” he said with a shrug, offering his characteristic Cheshire-cat grin. “If things continue like this, China will only be known for tea and pandas.”
Since he began blogging in 2006, Mr. Han, 28, has been delivering increasingly caustic attacks on China’s leadership and the policies he contends are creating misery for those unlucky enough to lack a powerful government post. With more than 300 million hits to his blog, he may be the most popular living writer in the world.
In a recent interview at his office in Shanghai, he described party officials as “useless” and prone to spouting nonsense, although he used more delicate language to dismiss their relevance. “Their lives are nothing like ours,” he said. “The only thing they have in common with young people is that like us, they too have girlfriends in their 20s, although theirs are on the side.”
Mr. Han has enjoyed widespread fame since he published his first novel at 19, but his popularity has ballooned in recent months through blog posts that seem to capture the zeitgeist of his peers, the so-called post-80s generation born after the economic reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping.
Theirs is a generation of only children, the result of China’s one-child policy, and one that has known only uninterrupted growth. Whether true or not, it is also a demographic with a reputation for being spoiled, impatient and less accepting of the storyline fed to them by government-run media.
If Mr. Han’s tongue is sharp, he is careful to deliver his barbs through sarcasm and humorous anecdotes that obliquely take on corruption, censorship and everyday injustice
In one recent post about redevelopment projects that often end in violence and forced evictions, he suggested that the government build public housing in the form of prisons. The benefits would be twofold, he explained: Tenants could make no claim on the apartments and those who make a fuss could simply be locked up in their homes.
His current gambit is a wryly subversive competition that will award $730 to the person who comes up with new lyrics to a song-and-dance routine that was broadcast last month during the reliably soporific Chinese New Year television gala.
The performance, staged by China’s national broadcaster and viewed by an estimated 400 million people, featured merry members of the Uighur minority belting out praise for Communist Party policies.
These were not the policies that many Uighurs bemoan as oppressive — and which may or may not have provoked the deadly riots in the western region of Xinjiang last summer — but ones that supposedly reduced taxes, increased health benefits and according to the singing farmer Maimaiti, filled his donkey sack with cash.
ALTHOUGH his posts are sometimes “harmonized” — a popular euphemism for censorship —his blog, published by one of China’s most popular Web portals, has so far been allowed to continue. Ran Yunfei, a writer and blogger in Sichuan Province, says that Mr. Han is partly insulated by his celebrity, but also by his avoidance of the most politically charged topics.
“He uses humor and wit to laugh at the injustices he sees,” said Mr. Ran, whose own blog is blocked in China and available only to those with the technical means to hop over the Great Firewall. “Perhaps the reason he’s tolerated is because he does not name names directly and he doesn’t go after the heart of the problem, which is China’s one-party dictatorship.”
His other trump card is his financial independence. With 14 books to his name and a successful career as a race car driver, he is not susceptible to pressures that constrain other critics, many of them academics or journalists whose jobs tend to evaporate when their public musings cross an invisible line.
But the government has lately found a way to pique him by holding up the release of his magazine. Mr. Han said the main objection appears to be an article that details the blacklisting of actors who have angered the authorities. Asked what he will do if his endeavor is thwarted, or if one day his blog is banned entirely, Mr. Han smiles and offers trademark sarcasm, delivered deadpan. “I’ll just become a better driver,” he said.
MR. Han has been reinventing himself since he dropped out of high school and promptly went on to become one of China’s best known writers. His first novel, “Triple Door,” plumbed the adolescent angst of those withering under the pressures of family and school. With two million copies in print, it is the best-selling book of the last 20 years.
The protagonists in that novel and several that followed were young men like himself, raised in small rural townships and disdaining authority, especially teachers, whom Mr. Han sometimes likens to prostitutes.
Growing up, Mr. Han says he was given wide latitude by his parents. His father was the front-page editor of a local party newspaper and his mother worked for a social service bureau helping the needy. “My mom gave me an appreciation for the underdog,” he said.
His family’s home was packed with literature, he said, and his father made sure to put the good stuff — books published before the Communist revolution — low enough for an 8-year-old to reach. “He put all the poorly written books published after the founding of the People’s Republic of China high enough so I couldn’t reach it,” Mr. Han said.
When his anti-establishment writings began to affect his parents’ state-run jobs, Mr. Han encouraged them to retire early, offering to support them financially.
Once viewed by critics as petulant and self-consciously rebellious, Mr. Han has moved beyond ad hominem attacks on poets, pop stars and fellow bloggers. These days his attention is largely drawn to society’s deeper problems: a surge in nationalism; the lackluster quality of contemporary culture; and the albatross of sky-high real-estate prices that keep China’s nascent middle-class in a constant state of anxiety.
He blames the high prices on local officials, who sell off land to the highest bidder in an effort to finance public works and pump up the double-digit economic growth figures that keep Beijing happy. High property values, he adds, also pay for all those dinners and fancy gifts that seem to be the birthright of officialdom.
The grim result is a country of young professionals so overworked and distracted by mortgage payments that they have no time to care about what ails China. “The government is happy to see prices go up, people are forced to buy property they can’t afford and they end up living in fear.” Then he smiles and adds, “It’s a perfect situation, right?”
Despite the sarcasm and griping, Mr. Han is an optimist at heart. The Internet, he says, will eventually prod China toward greater openness. No army of censors can completely constrain free expression. “I think the government really regrets the Internet,” he said, pausing for effect. “Originally, they thought it would be like the newspaper or the television — just another way to get their view out to the people. What they didn’t realize is that people can type and talk back. This is giving them a really big headache.”
