One man's journey through a contentious 2013

This year, I published an English-language book, titled A PracticalGuide to Chinese Cinema 2002-2012 which is now available in the Kindle store, but it does no include two of the most dramatic episodes that happened to me as a film critic. They might have shaped film criticism in China, though.

In summer, I became public enemy No 1 when hundreds of thousands of teenage girls heaped dirt and scorn and invectives on me. I had written a very critical review on Tiny Times, a movie the loved. They had grown up with the novel on which the movie is based. My review and my subsequent volleys with Guo Jingming, the author and director, triggered an avalanche eventually involving government mouthpieces and the Western press.

Imagine an America music critic saying Justin Bieber is an awful singer and see what happens. Of course my story was much more complicated than that. It was interpreted as a tug-of-war of different moral values, or aesthetics or generations or even political agendas. Anyway, I made it a point not to see the second installment, which was made together with the first part and premiered only two months later. Its box-office result was 200 million yuan below that of part one, which some attributed to the absence of my castigation, perhaps in jest. This means bad reviews sell a movie, a possibility more Chinese film-goers now reckon with.