The Problem with Me: And Other Essays About Making Trouble in China Today

by Han Han

Overview

“Funny and shrewd” (The New York Times Book Review) essays from China’s most popular young troublemaker about growing up millennial and causing social and political scandal today.

Han Han “owes equal debt to Jack Kerouac and Justin Timberlake” (The New Yorker). He’s the most influential (and provocative) young person in China, equally beloved and reviled for the satirical wit with which he takes on everyone from corrupt politicians to ludicrous protesters and everything from Internet culture in a country that censors the Internet to the question of whether China is ready for democracy. “Evocative and funny” and “occasionally electrifying” (The Wall Street Journal), The Problem with Me provides “an insider’s look into Chinese culture and politics” (Publishers Weekly).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781451660050
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	08/02/2016
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Born in 1982 to middle class parents, Han Han shot to fame at the age of seventeen with the publication of his debut novel, Triple Door, a runaway bestseller with over two million copies in print. Over the next fifteen years, he cemented his reputation as a director, singer, racecar driver, Internet celebrity, and public intellectual. The Problem with Me is the third of his books to appear in English, after This Generation and 1988: I Want to Talk with the World. He lives in Shanghai.

Table of Contents

Translators' Introduction ix

Foreword: Growing Up Is a Long Journey xiii

Growing Up 1

I Grew Up with Blue Skies 3

Soccer, Ah, Soccer 11

Those People, Those Things 17

The Problem with Teachers 27

The Problem with Cadres 31

The Problem with English 33

In the Kart Every Day 39

The Problem with Me 41

In the Kart Every Day 47

My First Time in Shanghai 53

SARS and a Rally Race in Longyou 63

Actually, I'm a Writer 69

Literature and the Era of Microblogs 71

Why Are There Still Modern Poets? 73

Poets Are Desperately Not Writing Poetry 77

Modern Poets Get Organized 79

Wang Shuo 81

There Hasn't Been Any Renaissance 85

There Will Always Be a Power 97

Pennies for the Writers 99

On Weibo and WeChat 103

For Every Self 107

I Still Want to Be a Stinking Public Intellectual 111

I Still Want to Be a Stinking Public Intellectual 113

Officials and Me 119

An American Soap Opera in Chongqing 125

Some People Should Get the Vote First 129

A Rumor That's Lasted for Many Years 135

Slaughter the Public 139

Remembering a Time When I Was Powerless 141

Let Me Take You for a U-turn on Chang'an Avenue 145

Chess Pieces That Deserted the Board 151

A VIP's Trip to Thailand 157

The Pacific Wind 161

Life as I Know It 167

Life as I Know It 169

Fatherhood 175

I Can't and I Don't 179

Children's Day 181

The New Masters Have Arrived 185

Chunping, I Did It 189

Remembering Xu Lang 195

School Reunions 201

Afterword: This Generation (2012 Edition) 205

Editorial Reviews

05/09/2016
This essay collection from Han (Triple Door), China’s premier millennial blogger and cultural critic, brims with wit. The selections are arranged chronologically, documenting Han’s growth from a disaffected high school drop-out into a serious, politically engaged writer. Han covers a range of topics, including his experiences of growing up in the countryside, driving race cars, writing fiction, and becoming a father. In defense of democracy, he speaks out against elitism and corruption, taking China’s literati and officials to task. He declares, “Popular participation, brought about by the Internet, means the abandonment of the well-known public intellectuals who used to say what was on everyone else’s mind.” Han uses the essay as a means to freely express his opinions—and he has no problem later retracting them, as when he slams the preciousness of poetry and then apologizes for his unfair criticism. At times, the translated prose comes across as awkward and stilted. Nevertheless, this is a groundbreaking book for Anglophone readers, offering an insider’s look into Chinese culture and politics. Han’s writing on every topic combines charming storytelling, wise aphorisms, and serious analysis. Agent: Marysia Juszczakiewicz, Peony Literary Agency. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

China’s most popular blogger.... His manicured, swaggering persona is a rebuke to the rumpled archetype of the Chinese intellectual, and owes equal debt to Kerouac and Timberlake.”
— The New Yorker

“Evocative and funny... occasionally electrifying.”
— Wall Street Journal

"Han Han’s writing on every topic combines charming storytelling, wise aphorisms, and serious analysis. This is a groundbreaking book for Anglophone readers, offering an insider’s look into Chinese culture and politics."
— Publishers Weekly

"Funny and shrewd.... Han Han has interesting things to say.”
— The New York Times Book Review

"Han Han’s large readership is the best evidence we have of a broad survival of common sense in China.”
— The New York Review of Books

"Funny and controversial... his personality does shine through."
— Library Journal

"China's top blogger for his acumen, humor, and scathing take."
— Booklist

"Han Han is a phenomenon of today's China who personifies a rapidly changing society."
— Jonathan Fenby, author of Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China Today, How It Got There and Where It Is Heading

From the Publisher

06/15/2016
Funny and controversial, Han (This Generation) became renowned in China as a blogger who walked the line of acceptable political satire. The book is comprised of several translated essays on his life and other musings. Unfortunately, in this collection Han's famous wit is lost in translation, particularly with certain Chinese sayings. At other times, however, his personality does shine through. For example, when writing about school, he says that the "dorm has all kinds of rules. I measured myself against them and discovered that, apart from possession of banned weapons, I'd violated all the rest." While he's known in China for challenging the status quo, few non-Chinese speakers will be familiar with Han, though individual essays, on issues such as education, racing, literature, travel, online media, and fatherhood, will find appeal among general readers. VERDICT While several essays will resonate with readers interested in select topics, the overall value of Han's prose is lost in translation. [See Prepub Alert, 2/29/16.]—Casey Watters, Singapore Management Univ.

Library Journal

2016-05-08
A collection from one of China's most outspoken "troublemakers and dissidents."The translators' introduction provides crucial context for newcomers to Han Han (This Generation: Dispatches from China's Most Popular Literary Star, 2012, etc.), who apparently was anointed "spokesperson for his generation" (he was born in 1982) in his native China. A high school dropout, he wrote a novel as a teenager, Triple Door (yet to be published in English), which sold millions of copies. He then turned his attention to auto racing, "going from literary prodigy to racing rookie," soon becoming as accomplished and renowned in this field as well. During the rise of blogging, he became China's top blogger and "an Internet celebrity." He recorded an album, directed a feature film, and became a family man. Now, he doesn't seem nearly as interested in his writing and disavows some of the essays that made him so popularly notorious. He represents an underschooled voice who protests the educational system and the rigidity of the nationalism and totalitarianism of his homeland. Yet none of the essays, interviews, and blog selections collected here is particularly well-written or will be all that provocative to American readers. "The Chinese education system is terrible because the teachers are terrible" might be a thunderbolt of criticism among his nation's generation, but it reads like a typical high schooler's rant. As this book covers 12 years of his writing (the same period as This Generation), his self-reflection shows some maturity. "You can't keep writing the same thing for so many years," he writes in "The Problem With Me" (2003). Ultimately, however, he writes, "I've never given up anything, from the tiniest flashes of inspiration to my grand ideals, and although my life may be filled with frustration or remorse, I have few regrets." A collection more interesting to Western readers for what the author represents than for anything he has written here.

Kirkus Reviews