Dodging the abyss

Han Han wears many hats: influential blogger, popular writer, race-car champion and film director. As his second feature film opens, the former wunderkind talks to Raymond Zhou about his fears and ambitions.

Han Han has the habit of giving a totally different English translation to the Chinese title of his feature film.

For his directorial debut, he insisted on Continent while the Chinese title is literally No Date for Next Meeting, because he wanted to convey the cross-continental journey the main characters took in the road-trip movie. His second film is called Duckweed in English, but the Chinese is the more uplifting Sailing with Full Wind and Breaking Waves, which is catchy but more or less a cliche. It opens on Jan 28, the Lunar New Year.