China’s Pop Fiction

May 4, 2008
China’s Pop Fiction
By AVENTURINA KING
The most successful writer in China today isn’t Gao Xingjian, the winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize, or even Jiang Rong, the author of the best-selling novel “Wolf Totem,” just released in the United States. It’s 24-year-old Guo Jingming, a pop idol whose cross-dressing, image-obsessed persona has made him a sensation in a country where the Communist dictatorship advocates prudery and heterosexuality. Thousands of teenagers — his readers are rarely over 20 — flock to Guo’s signing sessions. Some post frenzied declarations of love on his blog: “Little Four, I will always be with you!” (Guo’s nickname comes from “fourth dimension war,” a random quotation he found in a magazine.) Alongside adoring letters addressed to “Big Brother Guo,” the author posts pictures of himself half-naked in the shower, in his underwear or swathed in Dolce & Gabbana accessories and Louis XIV-style shirts.
Guo is hardly universally beloved. Last fall, he was voted China’s most hated male celebrity for the third year in a row on Tianya, one of the country’s biggest online forums. Yet three of his four novels have sold over a million copies each, and last year he had the highest income of any Chinese author: $1.4 million.
The most critically acclaimed Chinese novels of recent years — “Wolf Totem” (a parable about the death of Mongolian culture and a veiled critique of the Cultural Revolution), Yu Hua’s “To Live,” Mo Yan’s “Republic of Wine” — generally use their characters as vessels for broad social and political commentary. But Guo’s novels focus on the tortured psyches of his adolescent characters, who either nurse their melancholy by sitting alone for long hours under trees and on rooftops, or try to blunt it with drinking, fighting and karaoke.
“My main goal is to tell the story well and have everyone like it,” Guo said recently in a telephone interview. Which isn’t to say he traffics entirely in escapism. For all the over-the-top melodrama and brand-name dropping, his novels’ contemporary urban settings, Guo said, are far closer to the reality of his readers’ lives than the harsh countryside of China’s modern classics. And his frothy novels, though often denounced as “chain-manufactured writing,” do reflect social issues in their own way. The editor of Guo’s first novel, “City of Fantasy” — about the 350-year-old prince of an Ice Kingdom who is forced to kill his younger brother to protect the throne — told one of China’s leading newsweeklies that he had decided to publish the novel because it would appeal to the lonely children of China’s one-child generation.
Guo is the most successful of a dozen young celebrity authors who make up the “post-’80s” generation, some others of whom have also achieved book sales in the millions. This group includes the high school dropout and professional car racer Han Han, 25, who derides China’s inefficient educational system in his novels and regularly insults older, more established artists on his blog, and Zhang Yueran, 26, whose novel “Daffodils Took Carp and Went Away” features a bulimic girl who falls in love with her stepfather, is mistreated by her mother and is sent off to boarding school.
While the Chinese government frequently jails dissident writers or forces them into exile, it mostly ignores the antics of Guo and the other post-’80s writers. For all their flamboyance, they exemplify the social ideals of the new China — commercialism and individualism — said Lydia Liu, a professor of Chinese and comparative literature at Columbia University. They “don’t pose any threat,” Liu said. “They collaborate.”
Tao Dongfeng, a professor at Capital Normal University in Beijing who has harshly criticized some post-’80s writers for their lack of social conscience and their reliance on overblown fantasy elements, said young fans see authors like Guo less as writers than as “entertainment idols.” “What they write isn’t important,” he said. “What’s important is Han Han’s looks, the cars that he drives.”
Such things are certainly important to the authors themselves. I met with Guo last summer in a newly built upscale area on the outskirts of Shanghai, in the offices of Ke Ai (a homophone of the Chinese word for “cute”), the entertainment company he established in 2004 to produce teenage literary magazines like “I5land” and “Top Novel.” He enthusiastically demonstrated his encyclopedic knowledge of “American Idol” and his excitement at seeing the “Transformers” movie. An hour before the interview, I had phoned to ask if I could take his picture. He politely refused, saying an hour wasn’t long enough to prepare. “My fans worry about whether I look good, what clothes I wear,” he said. “There’s no way around it.”
All of Guo’s novels include a shy, mysterious hero who gets good grades and whose life otherwise parallels aspects of the author’s own. Guo was born in the southwestern city of Zigong, to an engineer father and a bank clerk mother who encouraged him to write. In 2001, when he was still in high school, Guo won first prize in a national essay contest sponsored by Mengya magazine. A short version of “City of Fantasy” — written, he told me, as relaxation therapy during his exams — was later published in the magazine and went on to sell more than 1.5 million copies in book form.
Guo’s second novel, “Never Flowers in Never Dreams,” a love triangle featuring harmless forays into the Beijing underworld, was published while he was studying film at Shanghai University. It sold 600,000 copies in its first month. Soon after, Guo was accused of plagiarizing the novel from Zhuang Yu’s “In and Out of the Circle.” In 2006, a court ordered him to pay $25,000 to Zhuang Yu and to apologize. Guo paid the judgment but refused to apologize or admit any wrongdoing. The press was outraged, calling Guo “Super Plagiarism Boy,” a play on “Super Voice Girls,” the Chinese equivalent of “American Idol.” When the author Wang Shuo, famous for his best-selling novels about Beijing drifters and lowlifes published in the late 1980s and early ’90s, denounced Guo as an “out-and-out thief” with “no sense of decency,” Guo replied that it was only “normal for the previous generation to discipline the later generation.”
Guo remains unbothered by the episode. “A lot of people who criticize you, they haven’t read your works, they really don’t understand what this thing is, so I don’t pay attention to those opinions,” he told me.
Neither, apparently, do his fans. While the case was still in process, Guo produced a musical album, “Lost,” a thin spread of guitar and piano under lyrics about young love, performed by singers chosen in a national competition he organized. It sold 400,000 copies. Last year, his novel “Cry Me a River,” about the ostracism and suicide of a pregnant high school student, sold a million copies in 10 days.
Guo may have survived charges of plagiarism and bad writing, but today he faces what may be a more dangerous threat: even younger writers. The past few years have seen the rise of a group of teenage authors, sometimes called the “post-’90s” generation. Four years ago, 9-year-old Yang Yang received $150,000 for his novel “The Magic Violin,” about a young boy who is befriended by enchanted objects after his father disappears. It sold 100,000 copies. He has since published three more books and last year signed a contract for a 10-book series. Last month, Yang Daqing’s “Story of the Ming Expedition,” a novel about the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592, supposedly written when the author was 13, hit bookstores. And 14-year-old Tang Chao’s second novel, “Give My Dream Back,” about unrequited love and suicide, was recently published with a first run of 50,000 copies.
Over the phone, Guo spoke dismissively of these potential rivals. “I don’t really know much about them,” he said. And they certainly don’t seem to be interfering with his plans. Guo’s next novel, “When We Were Young,” about four university students, arrives in stores in October. And next year, he plans to hold a national competition for young writers and to design his own line of stationery.
Aventurina King has written about Chinese culture and entertainment for The New York Times, Wired.com and The South China Morning Post.

中国的流行小说家

2008年5月4日

中国的流行小说家

作者：AVENTURINA KING

中国当今最成功的作家不是曾获得2000年诺贝尔奖的高行健，也不是刚刚在美国出版畅销小说《狼图腾》的姜戎。24岁的郭敬明，这位身着异装外形迷人的流行偶像，在这个共产党统治下提倡严肃生活和异性恋的国家引起了轰动。数以千计的十来岁的孩子——他的读者很少有超过20岁的——追寻着郭敬明的签名。许多疯狂的示爱留言张贴在他的博客上，比如“小四，我要永远和你在一起！”（郭敬明的昵称小四来自他自己无意在杂志里发现的一句话“四维战争”）。旁边还有粉丝的来信，给“郭大哥”。信的作者张贴了他自己身着内裤或者裹着D&G牌子的小挂件以及路易十四风格的裙子在浴室里的半裸照。

郭敬明很难被所有人都喜欢。去年秋天，他在天涯社区（中国最大的在线论坛之一）连续第三年被列入“中国最受人讨厌的男明星”的行列里。但是，他的前三部出版的小说每部都已售出超过百万册，去年他也是中国作家收入最高者，年收入140万美元。

近年来广受评论界赞誉的中国小说，如《狼图腾》（讲述一个蒙古文化灭亡的寓言故事，暗含着对“文化大革命”的批评），余华的《活着》以及莫言的《酒国》，基本都是运用人物形象承载着对广大社会和政治的评说。而郭敬明的小说中的青少年形象关注于他们受着煎熬的内心世界，他描写的人物或在树下、屋顶上独处数个小时，或通过喝酒打架唱卡拉OK麻木内心来疗愈他们的忧伤。

“我的主要目的就是写好故事，然后让所有人都喜欢。”郭敬明最近在电话采访里这样说。这并不是说他的作品就是要逃避什么。相比那些言过其实的剧作作品和那些著名的小作品，郭敬明认为他的小说里设置的当代城市生活背景要比那些中国近代经典里的农村背景更加贴近读者的生活。而他那些无足轻重的小说，虽然经常被人斥为“流水线写作”，也都依其本身反映着社会现实。郭敬明第一部小说《幻城》的编辑曾对某中国的顶尖周刊说，他决定出版这本书是因为它足以吸引中国独生子女一代的这些孤独的孩子。《幻城》讲述了幻雪帝国350岁的王子为了保住王位，被迫杀死幼弟的故事。

郭敬明是在十几位著名的“80后”的作家中最成功的一位，他们中的其他几位也曾创造过书籍销量达到百万的记录。这其中中包括高中辍学后成为职业赛车手的25岁青年，韩寒，他在小说里嘲讽中国无能的教育体系，也经常对老朽表现得无礼，而他更多的文章发表在自己的博客上。26岁的张悦然的小说《水仙已乘鲤鱼去》讲述了一位罹患暴食症的女孩爱上了她的继父，随后被生母虐待而送往寄宿制学校的故事。

中国政府经常把持不同政见的作家投入监狱或流放边疆，却一般都把郭敬明等80后作家的不合规矩的行为忽略。哥伦比亚大学中文和比较文学教授Lydia?刘说，他们的浮华做派，证明了崭新中国的社会理想——商品经济和个人主义。他们“不写什么危险的事，”刘说，“他们（与政府）合流了。”

陶东风，首都师范大学教授，他对一些80后作家缺失社会责任感的和过度依赖幻想提出严厉批评。他认为小粉丝们把像郭敬明这样的作家更多的视作“娱乐偶像”而不是个作家。“他们写什么并不重要”，他说，“重要的是韩寒的样子和他开什么样的车。”

而这些也当然对作家本身很重要。去年夏天我曾在在他2004年建立的娱乐公司Ke Ai（与中文的“可爱”谐音）的办公室里与郭敬明会面，办公室位于上海近郊一新兴高尚区。这家公司专门制作青少年文艺杂志，如《I5land》和《最小说》等。他热情地向我展示他对于“美国偶像”的无所不知以及看电影《变形金刚》时的激动。在开始采访前的一个小时，我打电话询问能否给他拍照，他礼貌地拒绝了，说一个小时不够准备的。“我的粉丝会担心我好不好看啊，穿什么衣服啊，”他说，“对于这些真是没办法。”

所有郭敬明的小说里都会有一个害羞而神秘并且成绩很好的主角，而他的生活多少来自作者本身。郭敬明生于一座西南的城市，自贡。做工程师的父亲和做银行职员的母亲一直鼓励他写作。2001年，郭敬明还在上高中时，他就已获得《萌芽》杂志举办的全国作文大赛一等奖。短篇版的《幻城》随后刊登在杂志上，继而印刷成册销量超过150万本。写作，郭敬明对我说，就是考试当中的放松治疗。

郭敬明的第二本小说《梦里花落知多少》，讲述了一个以北京为背景多少涉及到黑社会的三角恋故事。那时他已在上海大学学习电影。这本书在第一个月里售出了60万册，但很快郭敬明就被指称抄袭了庄羽的小说《圈里圈外》。2006年，法院判处他向庄羽赔款20万元并道歉。郭敬明支付了赔款但拒绝道歉或承认自己做错了。媒体被惹怒了，称他是“抄级男生”。这个名字是戏仿了“超级女声”——中国版的“美国偶像”。 王朔，因在1980年代后期和1990年代早期以描写北漂和下层生活而著名的畅销书作家，谴责郭敬明是个“不要脸的”“彻彻底底的小偷”。郭敬明回应说这是“前辈教训晚辈是应该的”。

郭敬明仍对此事件不在乎。“许多人批评你，但他们没看过你的作品，他们也真的不懂这个是什么，所以我不在乎这些意见。”他这样告诉我。

但是很显然，他的粉丝在乎。在案件仍在进行中时，郭敬明推出了自己的音乐专辑《迷藏》。一张薄薄的吉他钢琴伴唱的讲述年轻人爱情的专辑，由参加郭敬明组织的全国大赛中挑选出的歌手来演唱。专辑售出了40万份。去年，讲述未婚先孕的高中学生受到排挤随后自杀的小说《悲伤逆流成河》在十天内售出了百万册。

郭敬明或许已从抄袭案和糟糕的写作中走了出来，但今天他要面对更为严重的威胁：更年轻的作家。在过去的几年里已经见证了被称作“90后”的少年作家群的起步。4年前，9岁的阳阳凭他的小说《时光魔琴》赚得15万美元。小说讲述了一个小男孩在他父亲消失之后，被施了魔法的物件来帮助他的故事。此书售出了10万册。此后他又出版了另外三本书并在去年签订了一份10本书的出版协议。上个月，杨大庆的小说《大明远征军之烈血春秋》在书店上架。小说故事关于1592年日本出兵侵犯朝鲜，据说是作者13岁时写成的。而14岁的唐朝的第二本小说《把梦还我》在最近出版，首印5万册。小说讲述了单相思和自杀的故事。

通过电话采访，郭敬明对这些潜在的对手言辞露出不屑。“我对他们并不怎么了解，”他说。而这些90后作家也定然不会干扰到他的下一个计划。郭敬明的下一部小说，关于四个大学生的故事《当我们年轻时》（直译）预计将于10月上架。对于明年，他计划举办一场针对年轻作家的全国文学大赛，并且设计自己的系列文具。

AVENTURINA KING为《纽约时报》、《连线》杂志网络版和《南华早报》提供关于中国文化和娱乐方面的稿件