After a long delay, the magazine published by popular blogger and race car driver Han Han is now on the shelves. Now titled Party (or 独唱团 or “Chorus of Solos” in Chinese), the first issue shot to the number one position on Amazon.cn within ten hours of going on sale. From People’s Daily:
The magazine arrived at Hunan Book Town late on Tuesday afternoon, with a special sales counter set up at the entrance. “We got 140-plus copies. Sales are good,” said a person manning the counter.
Many readers look forward to reading criticisms on social evils – the reason Han’s blog posts became famous across the country – in the magazine, according to an ongoing online survey on igeng.com.
A total of 38,220 responses were collected by 6:15 pm on Tuesday, of which 80 percent said they would buy the magazine and 70 percent hoped to see some sharp criticism in it.
Despite it’s immediate popularity, Global Times finds several of Han Han’s critics to review the publication:
Sales of Han’s long-awaited magazine, called Party, have dominated amazon.cn’s No.1 position since its pre-release on July 1 (see Tuesday’s report in the Global Times). However, some writers born in the 80s, including Zhang Yiyi, Duguyi (a pseudonym), Xu Duoyu, Qin Guiyu, Lin Xiao and Yuan Guan, allegedly together signed a proposal calling on readers to reject Han’s “pseudo literature.” The proposal was published on Duguyi’s blog at sina. com Tuesday.
The proposal says Party is filled with affected and weakly written literature, claims that Han’s independent image is a scam and says that the many fans who follow him are a crazy and ugly cultural phenomenon. It called on others to reject Han.
“Who are these guys? I’ve never heard of these so-called youth writers,” an Internet user called wuji posted at tieba.baidu.com in response.
“I didn’t read Han’s Party, but when you know the qualifications of a cook, you don’t need to taste all his dishes,” Zhang Yiyi told the Global Times Tuesday. Zhang lives in Beijing and is promoting his own new book, Hype Skills.
Read more about Han Han and the history of his magazine via CDT.
