Wordsmith is feeling misunderstood

In its Nov 2 issue, Time Asia ran a profile of Han Han, calling him the "best-selling novelist, champion amateur race-car driver, wildly popular blogger and, as his self-consciously provocative antics at the track underlined, China's most media-savvy celebrity rebel".

Han is seen as a "torchbearer" of the "post-80s generation", which Time defines as "apolitical, money- and status-obsessed children of the country's explosive economic boom". The magazine goes on to quote Lydia Liu, a professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, who argues that Han "is a willing participant in a process that channels the disaffected energy of youth into consumerism".

The article portrays Han as "carefully groomed in an epicene, metrosexual way that is unusual among Chinese males of his age."